^^ 


^s-- 


A  CORNER  OF 
SPAIN 

BY 

MIRIAM  COLES  HARRIS 

AUTHOR   OF   "rUTLEDGE,"  ETC. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

MDCCCXCVIII 


COPYRIGHT,  1898,  BY  MIRIAM  COLES  HARRIS 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

I.  EN  ROUTE  .... 

II.  GIBRALTAR    .... 

III.  FROM  ALGECIRAS  TO  MALAGA 

IV.  MALAGA 

V.  LIFE   IN   A  CONVENT     . 

VL  THE  OLD  FORTRESS 

VII.  IN   THE   CONVENT   GARDEN 

VIII.  A   SPANISH   CURE       . 

IX.  SPANISH    LIMITATIONS 

X.  A   MIGRATING  FAMILY     . 

XI.  IN   THE    MALAGA    MOUNTAINS 

XII.  BEHIND  THE    SCENES    IN    THE    MALAGA 

BULL   RING 

XIII.  A   SPANISH    MILK-ROUTE       . 

XIV.  BLOOD   POWER 
XV.  AN   ANDALUSIAN    COOK 

XVI.  mXlAGA'S   BISHOP    . 

XVII.  MALAGA'S   MANNERS     . 

XVIIL  MATINAL 

XIX.  IN  THE   SEVILLE   BULL  RING 

XX.  AT  THE   SEVILLE  FAIR    . 


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16s 
183 


A  CORNER   OF   SPAIN 


EN  ROUTE 


A  TROPICAL  Christmas  on  Long  Island, 
and  a  New  Year's  day  in  New  York  that 
might  have  passed  muster  for  a  Florida 
May-day,  had  only  whetted  our  thirst  for 
a  Southern  winter.  This  could  not  last 
long ;  such  weather  was  unseasonable ; 
we  wanted  to  go  where  it  was  seasonable. 
A  trip  in  Southern  waters ;  warm  weather 
the  second  day  out ;  no  fogs,  no  Banks 
to  pass,  none  of  the  terrors  of  the  North 
Atlantic,  —  that  was  our  happy  pro- 
gramme. 

We  sailed  out  of  the  harbor  on  a  balmy 
morning,  strains  of  music  and  scent  of 
I 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

flowers  filling  the  air.  The  Kaiser  is  a 
fine  ship,  the  cabins  are  full  of  appliances 
for  comfort,  enough  furniture  for  an  ordi- 
nary sleeping-room,  and  as  much  free 
space  for  moving  about  as  in  an  average 
New  York  drawing-room.  We  sat  down 
to  our  first  meal  with  a  buoyant  feeling 
that  we  had  made  a  wise  choice  in  taking 
the  Mediterranean  route;  our  fellow- 
voyagers'  faces  expressed  the  same  happy 
conviction. 

Alas,  before  nightfall,  we  saw  it  all 
d'un  autre  (vil.  To  be  brief,  "the  North 
Pole  wasn't  in  it,"  as  our  jaundiced 
Western  neighbor  at  table  said.  "  Give 
me  the  North  Atlantic  every  time.  Give 
me  Banks,  fogs,  icebergs.  I  know  all 
about  'em,  and  I  have  n't  expected  any- 
thing else,  but  deliver  me  from  'trips  in 
Southern  waters '  crusted  with  icicles, 
from  '  warm  weather  the  second  day  out ' 
that  cuts  like  a  knife,  and  from  all  such 
'tropical  seas '  as  these  ! " 

P'or  six  dreadful  days,  no  one,  not  even 

2 


f\ 


EN    ROUTE 

the  embittered  Westerner,  left  his  berth  ; 
in  all  the  abject  misery  of  prolonged 
seasickness  there  was  plenty  of  time  to 
ask,  Had  the  decision  to  leave  home  been 
such  a  wise  one  ?  In  the  dead  unhappy 
night  the  great  waves  broke  on  the  deck 
over  the  cabin  with  the  roar  of  artillery. 
With  nerves  grown  wild  listening  to  the 
racing  of  the  screw,  your  imagination  was 
not  above  dwelling  upon  possibilities  of 
all  kinds.  Might  there  not  be  a  secret 
bit  of  mechanism  hidden  by  anarchist 
fiends  in  some  innocuous-looking  bale  of 
merchandise  in  the  hold,  ticking  its  way 
out,  till  it  struck  the  ship's  hour  of  doom  ? 
Might  there  not  be  some  low-lying  derelict 
stealthily  coming  towards  us  under  cover 
of  the  inky  blackness,  to  stab  our  good 
Kaiser  under  the  fifth  rib  like  another 
Joab  and  send  us  to  the  bottom  ?  Put- 
ting derelicts  and  dynamite  and  home- 
sickness out  of  the  question,  we  were 
paying  a  high  price  for  the  subtle  plea- 
sure of  foreign  travel  and  its  mental 
3 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

stimulus.  The  abandoned  squalor  and  in- 
delicacy of  a  seasick  cabin  ;  the  crash- 
ing of  crockery ;  the  rolling  about  of 
steamer-trunks,  valises,  medicine-chests ; 
the  discomfort  of  unmade  berths,  and 
sore  and  bruised  limbs ;  the  horror  of 
cold  scraps  of  food  swallowed  without 
lifting  the  head ;  a  dominant  sense  of 
degradation  and  disorder,  —  all  this  had 
to  be  paid  for  the  coveted  enlargement 
of  experience,  for  gratifying  the  lust  of 
change,  for  the  sweetness  of  going  where 
by  nature  and  Providence  we  did  not  seem 
intended  to  go. 

Six,  nearly  seven  days  of  this,  and  then 
the  storm  abated  and  the  sea  went  down. 
Sick  and  wretched  beings  crawled  on 
deck  into  the  brilliant  sunshine  ;  the  deck 
stewards  began  their  belated  reign ; 
steamer-chairs  and  rugs  became  matters 
of  interest.  Late  on  Friday  we  passed 
in  and  out  among  the  ravishing  Azores, 
not  near  enough  "to  see  the  whites  of  our 
enemy's  eyes,"  but  quite  close  enough  to 
4 


EN   ROUTE 

admire  the  whiteness  of  his  pretty  houses, 
and  the  picturesqueness  of  his  mountain 
roads,  and  to  hear  the  roar  of  the  great 
surf  that  beat  upon  his  rocky  sides. 

By  this  time  the  air  was  balmy,  and 
from  that  on,  "  Southern  waters  "  were  no 
fiction.  People  walked  about  the  broad 
decks  without  wraps  and  without  hats  in 
the  equally  exquisite  sunlight  and  moon- 
light. We  dined  on  deck,  and  lay  in  our 
steamer-chairs  till  all  hours  at  night. 
Every  day  some  new  "  stowaway  "  crept 
up  and  looked  about;  there  was  good 
music,  there  were  pretty  children,  there 
were  queer  people  to  look  at,  and  even 
pleasant  ones  to  talk  to.  The  jolly  cap- 
tain rolled  about  and  chaffed  everybody. 
It  was  the  very  poetry  of  sea-going :  never 
such  stars,  never  such  soft  life-giving 
winds ;  what  one  ate  and  drank  was  nec- 
tar and  ambrosia,  and  one  had  the  appetite 
of  childhood  to  eat  and  drink  it  with. 
But  it  was  not  the  second  day  out,  as  the 
prospectus  said,  and  it  was  on  the  tenth 
5 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

and  not  the  eighth  clay  that  we  sighted 
Spain.  We  had  lost  all  that  by  the 
storm. 

The  first  land  we  saw  was  the  yellow 
Spanish  coast,  and  then  the  African 
mountains  loomed  up  on  the  other  hand, 
and  we  found  ourselves  drawing  towards 
the  far-famed  Straits.  It  was  a  pictur- 
esque entree  into  the  Old  World.  The 
all -golden  afternoon  had  not  begun  to 
wane  as  we  passed  through  them,  the 
great  headlands  of  the  African  mountains 
rising  on  our  right,  and  the  low  Spanish 
coast  lying  on  our  left,  the  sea  as  blue  as 
the  heavens  and  as  smooth.  Up  on  the 
bridge  the  captain  had  pointed  out  to  us 
Trafalgar,  then  Tarifa,  and  on  the  other 
side  Tangier  and  the  Fez  wildernesses, 
whose  ranges  of  low  hills  the  declining 
sun  told  off  one  by  one  in  graduated  haze. 
Our  huge  ship  moved  steadily  on,  its 
decks  swarming  with  a  holiday  crowd,  gay 
and  eager.  We  began  to  wonder,  like  the 
French  maid  who  wished  she  could  be  on 
6 


EN   ROUTE 

the  sidewalk  and  see  herself  ride  by  in 
the  carriage,  if  we  were  not  as  interesting 
to  the  shore  as  the  shore  was  to  us. 
Everything  became  a  little  histrionic ;  the 
rapture  of  the  crowd  as  the  Rock  of  Gi- 
braltar hove  in  sight  was  exaggerated,  the 
singing  of  the  men  raising  and  then 
dropping  the  great  anchor  seemed  done 
for  effect ;  everything  was  so  out  of  the 
commonplace  that  we  doubted  it. 

Just  at  this  point  we  were  called  down 
to  dinner,  a  meal  of  supererogation  for 
those  who  were  to  land  at  Gibraltar; 
and  when  we  came  up  from  it,  the  even- 
ing light  shone  upon  the  picturesque  town 
climbing  up  the  base  of  the  Rock  which 
was  towering  over  our  heads,  and  palm- 
trees,  and  stucco  houses,  and  Moorish 
towers  and  stone  ramparts  mixed  them- 
selves up  confusedly.  The  crazy  little 
steam-launch  had  come  out  to  us  ;  the 
water  was  black  with  small  boats ;  men 
with  Moorish  things  to  sell,  and  boatmen, 
and  couriers,  climbed  up  the  side  of  the 
7 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

ship  and  boarded  her.  It  was  a  precious 
7neUc.  Then  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  we 
had  to  collect  our  wits  and  to  pay  our 
fees. 

The  matter  of  fees  is  enough  to  take  the 
romance  out  of  a  troubadour.  It  is  a  thing 
you  cannot  be  forehanded  about,  even  if 
you  mean  to  be  free-handed.  It  is  a 
traveler's  axiom  never  to  fee  your  servant 
till  you  need  no  more  service  from  him, 
as  gratitude  is  a  sense  of  favors  to  come. 
In  the  thickening  twilight,  therefore,  we 
had  to  dispense  the  strange  coin  of  which 
we  had  scarcely  yet  mastered  the  values, 
and  gold  and  silver  were  of  one  com- 
plexion in  the  dimness. 

If  the  Teutons  of  the  Kaiser  were  not 
satisfied,  they  did  not  tell  us,  and  we  left 
them  with  a  brief  feeling  of  duty  done, 
only  to  fall  into  other  complications  be- 
fore we  reached  the  shore.  Every  one 
who  touched  our  luggage  felt  he  had  a 
claim  upon  us  ;  by  the  time  we  were  half 
across  the  great  stone  quay  at  Gibraltar, 
8 


EN   ROUTE 

now  bathed  in  moonlight,  we  were  hope- 
lessly compromised  with  three  porters, 
two  boatmen,  and  a  courier  from  the 
Royal  Hotel.  It  was  all  very  distressing, 
but  we  were  on  dry  land  again,  derelicts 
and  dynamite  were  fears  of  the  past,  and 
the  lights,  the  sentinels,  the  massive 
gateways,  the  narrow  winding  streets 
told  us  the  dry  land  was  the  Rock  of 
Gibraltar,  and  we  were  where  we  had 
never  been  before;  a  thing  of  itself  to 
promise  happiness. 

9 


II 

GIBRALTAR 

It  is  always  wise  to  know  some  one 
who  is  at  home  in  the  place  to  which  you 
go,  even  for  a  week.  We  had  occasion, 
while  we  were  at  Gibraltar,  to  bless  the 
friend  who  warned  the  American  Consul 
of  our  coming,  and  asked  him  to  look 
after  us.  By  his  grace  we  were  delivered 
from  the  miseries  of  the  Royal  Hotel, 
which  is  as  bad  as  the  best  hotel  in  a 
civilized  city  can  well  be.  It  seemed 
superficially  clean,  but  a  pervading  smell 
of  carbolic  roused  all  sorts  of  suspicions 
in  the  mind.  The  bread  was  sour,  the 
butter  beyond  belief  ;  and  whatever  vir- 
tue the  rest  of  the  food  had  was  neutral- 
ized by  the  fact  that  you  could  not  get 
it,  for  there  was  absolutely  no  service. 
lo 


GIBRALTAR 

Therefore  when  we  found  ourselves  in- 
stalled in  fine  large  rooms,  the  great  win- 
dows of  which  commanded  a  sight  of  two 
continents,  and  all  Gibraltar  and  its  bay- 
to  boot,  and  in  a  house  immaculately 
clean,  and  where  the  food  was  thoroughly 
English  and  good,  the  service  fair,  and 
the  price  one  third  less  than  that  of  the 
hotel,  we  added  to  our  tourist's  credo  an 
article  expressing  faith  in  the  virtue  of 
knowing  some  one  who  knows  more  than 
you  do  of  the  place  you  go  to.  Wheatley 
Terrace  is  the  name  of  these  long  estab- 
lished lodgings,  and  seems  as  well  known 
at  the  post  office  and  shops  as  that  of 
any  hotel. 

Gibraltar  not  being  Spain,  nor  yet  geo- 
graphically England,  one  feels  a  certain 
bewilderment  in  straying  about  in  streets 
bearing  all  sorts  of  English  names,  and 
swarming  with  all  sorts  of  foreign  people. 
Parcels  Post  brings  you  parcels  delivered 
by  a  Spaniard  who  does  not  speak  Eng- 
lish ;  in  the  Moorish  market  you  cannot 
II 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

even  buy  an  egg  in  your  mother  tongue, 
and  you  may  as  well  give  up  finding  your 
way  about  if  you  do  not  speak  Spanish. 
Turbaned  Moors,  cut-throat  looking  Span- 
iards, Jews,  Greeks,  sunburned  sailors  of 
all  the  nations  of  Europe,  mingle  with 
British  soldiers  and  American  tourists  in 
the  narrow  streets.  English  women  driv- 
ing jaunty  cobs,  officers  riding  well-bred 
horses,  artillery  wagons,  peasant  funerals, 
donkeys  staggering  under  heavy  loads, 
mules  with  gay  trappings,  all  jostle  each 
other  in  the  steep  winding  ways  of  this 
unique  town,  which  is  as  picturesque  as 
Italy  and  as  clean  as  England,  as  old  as 
Helen  of  Troy,  and  as  smart  as  a  French 
provincial  city.  Above  you  towers  the 
Rock,  gray  and  green,  direct  into  the 
sky ;  below  you  is  a  sea  of  roofs  diversi- 
fied with  palm-trees  and  gardens,  and 
beyond  spreads  the  blue  bay  dotted  with 
sails,  and  across  it  the  hills  of  Spain.  You 
point  in  one  direction  and  some  one  says 
airily,  "  Oh,  that  *s  Africa,"  and  in  another, 

12 


GIBRALTAR 

"  That  ?  Why,  that 's  the  Mediterranean, 
don't  you  know,"  and  observe  casually  of 
another  blue  strip  that  there  goes  the 
Atlantic.  It  mixes  one  up.  Here  is  a 
seven-miles  bit  of  Great  Britain,  from 
which  you  could  throw  a  biscuit  into 
Spain  and  a  bomb  into  Africa,  and  where 
you  have  to  put  English  stamps  on  your 
letters  and  can  eat  oatmeal  "to  your 
breakfast." 

It  always  seems  a  trifle  dramatic  on 
England's  part  to  keep  up  Gibraltar  at 
an  expense  of  a  million  of  dollars  and 
more  a  year  for  the  simple  wages  and 
subsistence  of  its  five  thousand  men  in 
uniform.  Heaven  knows  what  she  spends 
annually  on  repairs  and  material  and  that 
sort  of  thing.  (She  has  already  sunk 
more  than  fifty  millions  sterling  on  the 
"plant.")  It  is  like  one  of  those  great 
English  estates  where  the  lordly  owner 
does  not  spend  a  fortnight  a  year,  but 
where  everything  is  kept  up  as  though 
he  were  coming  to-morrow.  He  can  ill 
13 


A   CORNER   OF    SPAIN 

afford  to  do  it,  but  neither  can  he  afford 
to  forego  the  prestige. 

To  be  sure,  Gibraltar  is  the  lock  of  the 
Mediterranean,  and  John  Bull  has  the  key 
in  his  pocket.  He  likes  to  feel  that,  and 
to  rattle  it  around  with  some  other  im- 
aginary keys  and  titles  which  he  keeps 
there.  He  thinks  that  rattle  awes  the 
nations  ;  he  has  some  old-fashioned  ideas 
about  human  nature ;  he  has  not  quite  as- 
similated its  complex  character.  We  are 
of  a  younger  generation  of  actors ;  we 
know  the  day  of  playing  to  the  gallery  is 
past. 

Apropos  of  galleries,  those  of  Gibral- 
tar are  the  great  sight ;  there  is  where  a 
good  deal  of  the  fifty  millions  ^erling  has 
gone.  The  vast  Rock  is  honeycombed 
with  them,  modern  catacombs,  but  spick 
and  span,  and  devoid  of  dead  men's  bones. 
The  views  from  the  embrasures  are  mag- 
nificent, the  order  and  perfection  of  every- 
thing complete.  It  is  all  point  device, 
from  the  guns  up  to  the  gunners,  but 
14 


GIBRALTAR 

you  never  get  over  the  feeling  that  it  is 
a  show  place,  and  nobody  will  ever  live  in 
it,  and  it  had  better  be  given  up  before 
the  family  are  quite  beggared. 

A  charming  afternoon  drive  is  through 
the  Alameda  to  Europa  Point.  The  Ala- 
meda is  a  beautiful  endless  garden,  full  of 
palm  and  orange  and  eucalyptus  and  all 
sorts  of  trees  you  are  not  likely  to  know, 
and  all  sorts  of  flowers  that  you  are,  but 
these  last  so  exaggerated  as  to  stagger 
you,  "growed  out  o'  knowledge;  "  a  heli- 
otrope hedge  eight  feet  high,  geraniums 
the  size  of  scrub-oaks,  arbutilum  waving 
their  coral  bells  high  in  the  air  above  you. 
The  road  to  Europa  Point  winds  in  and 
out  among  barracks  and  government 
buildings  and  officers'  quarters,  all  in 
perfect  order,  amid  delicious  verdure, 
and  all  commanding  beautiful  views  of 
the  sea.  One  would  think  it  the  very 
poetry  of  "soldiering"  to  be  stationed 
here,  w^ithin  four  days  of  London,  and 
yet  in  a  climate  where  the  sunshine  seems 
15 


A   CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

eternal  and  the  flowers  bloom  all  the  year, 
and  where  there  is  so  little  to  do.  But  in 
point  of  fact  the  officers  loath  it,  and  with 
the  men  it  is  equally  unpopular.  Better 
fifty  years  of  England  than  a  cycle  of 
Gibraltar.  Socially  Gibraltar  does  not 
equal  Malta  and  some  other  garrison 
towns.  The  crack  regiments  are  not 
sent  here,  I  am  told,  and  the  flavor  of 
life  is  insipid  in  consequence.  The  Hunt- 
ing Club  has  good  sport,  and  there  are 
capital  covers.  The  meets,  of  course,  are 
all  in  Spain,  some  of  them  very  distant. 
One  includes  crossing  the  bay  to  Alge- 
ciras  and  "training  "  nearly  an  hour,  but 
once  there,  the  sport  is  said  to  be  excel- 
lent. The  nearer  meets  are  across  the 
Spanish  lines  beyond  the  cork  woods  ;  the 
last  one  while  we  were  there  was  sixteen 
miles  off,  a  tiresome  distance  in  that  warm 
climate.  There  are  tennis,  and  badmin- 
ton, and  polo,  and  cricket,  and  rowing 
clubs,  and  two  or  three  theatres ;  the 
Garrison  Library,  in  its  beautiful  garden, 
i6 


GIBRALTAR 

is  delightful ;  the  governor  has  to  give 
two  balls  a  year,  bongri  malgre ;  there 
are  subscription  dances,  and  masquerades, 
and  dinners,  and  teas  ad  itatiseam.  But 
Gibraltar,  sunny,  picturesque,  historic,  — 
this  magnificent  monument  of  national 
resource,  this  museum  of  military  device, 
this  grand  work  of  supererogation  above 
and  beyond  all  the  requirements  to  which 
it  can  possibly  be  put,  —  is  a  beastly  bore, 
a  dismal  hole,  to  the  officers  stationed  here 
in  it.  But  perhaps  it  is  only  their  fagon 
de  parley} 

The  British  lion  seems  to  have  laid  his 
paw  heavily  on  the  Gibraltar  cabman,  who 


1  It  must  be  admitted  the  soft  climate  is  enervating,  far 
more  so  than  any  part  of  Spain  we  saw  ;  there  is  something 
in  its  situation  under  the  Rock  which  makes  the  air  insup- 
portably  warm  and  stagnant.  The  other  side  of  the  Rock, 
Europa  Point,  seems  fresh  and  invigorating  by  comparison, 
and  Tangier,  swept  by  strong  ocean  winds,  is  delicious  even 
in  midsummer.  A  second  visit  in  the  early  spring  increased 
this  impression  of  Gibraltar,  and  one  often  heard  casual 
allusions  to  "  a  touch  of  Rock  fever,"  among  the  officers' 
families.  None  of  them  are  very  well  or  very  happy  there, 
and  the  wish  of  every  one  seems  to  be  to  get  away. 

17 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

is  inevitably  a  Spaniard.  He  is  the  only- 
cabman  in  Europe  who  can  be  imposed 
upon.  He  never  asks  a  poiir-boirc,  and 
if  you  give  him  less  than  his  due  through 
ignorance  of  Spanish  money  or  language, 
or  of  the  code  governing  drivers  of  hack- 
ney carriages  which  H.  B.  M.  has  pasted 
up  in  his  poor  little  vehicle,  he  rarely  re- 
monstrates, but  looks  plaintively  down  at 
the  insufificient  coin  in  his  palm,  and  al- 
most imperceptibly  shakes  his  head.  Two 
pesetas  an  hour  is  what  he  is  entitled  to 
receive  for  driving  two  people  up  the  face 
of  that  stupendous  rock.  On  even  the 
gentlest  declivities,  seen  at  a  little  dis- 
tance, the  horse  looks  like  a  fly  crawling 
up  a  pane  of  glass.  When  you  pay  the 
man  eighty  cents  for  a  drive  of  two  hours 
you  feel  it  is  blood-money,  and  that  you 
have  certainly  taken  a  year  out  of  his 
horse's  life.  The  road  to  Europa  Point 
is  no  exception  to  this  rule.  The  latter 
part  of  it  is  indeed  precipitous.  The  views 
are  beyond  description  beautiful  as  you 
i8 


GIBRALTAR 

round  the  Point  and  climb  up  the  Rock 
to  the  governor's  cottage.  Awhile  after 
passing  this,  which  in  its  shut-up  condi- 
tion looks  a  cross  between  a  bowling  alley 
and  a  bathing-house,  the  cabman  stops. 
He  draws  the  line  here,  or  perhaps 
H.  B.  M.  draws  it,  and  the  rest  of  the 
climbing  must  be  a  personal  matter.  A 
sunny  afternoon  on  this  sheer  height  is 
most  sweet  and  still ;  leagues  and  leagues 
of  blue  Mediterranean  stretch  out  to  the 
horizon  ;  you  see  the  faint  outline  of  the 
African  mountains,  the  purple  of  the 
nearer  Spanish  Sierras  ;  the  gray  Rock 
above  mounts,  as  always,  straight  into  the 
sky.  You  do  not  wonder  so  much  that 
England  does  not  want  to  give  up  Gi- 
braltar. 

19 


Ill 

FROM   ALGECIRAS   TO    MALAGA 

It  is  foolhardy  to  travel  in  a  country 
where  you  know  nothing  of  the  language ; 
and  we  had  fool's  luck  on  our  first  day's 
journey  in  Spain.  The  day  before  we  had 
gone  out  to  look  for  a  Cook's  office  in  Gi- 
braltar in  which  to  buy  our  tickets.  For- 
tunately one  had  been  opened  there  within 
two  weeks.  It  was  very  spic-and-span,  and 
a  pompous  little  Spaniard  with  white  teeth 
told  us  he  was  sure  travel  in  Spain  would 
rapidly  increase  now  that  it  was  known 
there  was  a  Cook's  office  in  Gibraltar. 
I  said  I  supposed  they  were  established 
in  all  the  principal  cities.  He  confessed 
that  Gibraltar  and  Madrid  were  the  only 
places  as  yet  blessed  by  this  source  of 
sweetness  and  light.    This  was  bad  news, 

20 


FROM   ALGECIRAS   TO   MALAGA 

for  there  is  worry  avoided  in  buying  your 
tickets  from  an  English-speaking  person, 
and  in  being  able  to  ask  questions  about 
the  route  with  a  reasonable  prospect  of 
understanding  the  answers.  The  process 
of  buying  a  railway  ticket  at  a  Spanish 
station  is  scarcely  less  complicated  than 
that  of  buying  a  house  and  lot  at  home. 
The  morning  we  lefj  Gibraltar,  we  got  to 
the  ticket  office  half  an  hour  before  the 
boat  was  to  start,  having  our  tickets 
already  in  our  pockets  ;  and  notwithstand- 
ing, we  were  in  grave  danger  of  being  left. 
Cook's  agent  was  waiting  for  us,  in  a  fine 
new  uniform  which  included  a  baton.  He 
marshaled  us  up  to  the  desk  where  we 
were  to  show  our  tickets  and  to  pay  the 
extra  weight  on  our  trunks,  which  were 
left  outside  to  be  weighed.  Three  men, 
exclusive  of  little  Cook  and  his  baton, 
were  engaged  fifteen  minutes  in  examining 
the  already  purchased  tickets,  in  entering 
their  numbers  in  a  book,  in  marking  and 
punching  them,  and  in  requiring  our  signa- 

21 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

tures  and  assents  to  something  important, 
what  of  course  we  did  not  know.  Outside, 
a  mob  was  assisting  at  the  weighing  of  the 
two  trunks.  The  welkin  rang  with  their 
loud  acclaim.  What  that  was  all  about 
we  did  not  know  then,  nor  do  we  know 
now.  After  a  long  delay,  the  result  of 
the  weighing  was  announced ;  there  was 
more  Spanish  discussion  and  gesticula- 
tion, and  then  Cook's  little  man  came  and 
told  me  there  was  two  dollars  to  pay,  and 
I  paid  it.  Leastways,  I  gave  him  an  Eng- 
lish sovereign  out  of  which  to  pay  it.  Then 
ensued  the  wildest  uproar  of  all.  All  four 
men  brandished  their  arms  about  and 
talked  as  if  some  one's  life  were  in  danger. 
I  felt  I  had  a  right,  to  know  whose,  and 
considered  that  as  I  was  paying  a  dollar 
for  the  English  of  Cook's  man,  I  was 
entitled  to  ask  him.  He  explained  to  me 
with  gentle  courtesy  and  in  very  broken 
English,  that  the  ticket  agent  did  not 
know  whether  he  was  justified  in  chan- 
ging an  English  sovereign.      "  But,"  said 

22 


FROM  ALGECIRAS   TO   MALAGA 

the  little  man  with  dignity,  "I  tell  him, 
I  take  the  response." 

The  ticket  agent  finally  went  to  a  chest 
of  drawers  and,  unlocking  one,  with  re- 
luctance counted  out  the  change.  All 
this  time  the  other  men  watched  him, 
and  talked  a  good  deal.  Then  the  little 
Cook  took  the  money  and  counted  it  out 
to  me,  and  I  put  it  away  in  my  purse,  as 
he  assured  me  it  was  all  right.  I  am 
sure  I  hope  it  was.  I  had  no  means  of 
judging.  Our  hand  luggage  meanwhile 
had  been  put  into  a  rowboat  to  be  taken 
out  to  the  ferry-boat  which  runs  across 
the  bay  to  Algeciras,  where  we  were  to 
take  the  train.  The  rowboat  proved  to  be 
consecrate  to  some  other  use,  and  a  great 
clamor  ensued  as  the  things  were  all 
fished  up  out  of  it  by  two  or  three  porters, 
and  carried  to  another  boat,  and  dropped 
down  into  it.  Fortunately  we  were  the 
only  passengers  registering  that  morning, 
or  we  should  never  have  got  off. 

Meantime  it  began  to  rain  furiously ;  the 
23 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

whole  quay  seemed  under  water  in  three 
minutes.  So  much  time  had  been  con- 
sumed, it  seemed  probable  we  should  be 
left.  But  at  last  a  boat  was  brought  up 
to  the  wharf,  and  in  a  tropical  deluge  we 
went  down  some  steps,  and  at  a  happy 
lurch  of  the  rocking  skiff  were  shot  on 
board  by  the  boatmen.  Our  baggage  was 
covered  with  an  old  sail,  but  several  men 
were  also  sheltered  under  it,  and  all  the 
place  left  for  us  was  in  the  stern  of  the 
boat,  with  a  pool  of  water  on  the  narrow 
seat,  and  standing-room  in  a  lake.  I  pre- 
ferred to  stand.  I  have  never  been 
exposed  to  so  heavy  a  rain,  and  after  we 
got  outside  the  mole,  the  waves  were  high. 
As  one  huge  one  sent  us  up  on  its  crest, 
I  thought  I  was  going  overboard,  and 
caught  the  arm  of  a  man  standing  beside 
me.  When  we  got  down  off  the  watery 
mountain  into  a  quieter  bit  of  sea,  I 
looked  at  the  man  whose  arm  I  was  still 
grasping.  I  am  afraid,  if  I  had  seen  him 
on  dry  land  and  under  circumstances  of 
24 


FROM   ALGECIRAS   TO   MALAGA 

less  peril,  I  should  have  thought  he  was 
a  middle-aged  brigand.  But  he  was  so 
touched  by  this  mark  of  confidence  that 
his  expression  was  benign.  He  of  course 
could  not  speak  English,  but  he  managed 
by  gesture  to  assure  me  that  there  was 
no  danger  and  that  he  would  look  after 
us,  which  he  continued  to  do,  with  un- 
obtrusive kindness,  all  through  the  long 
day's  journey. 

If  England  would  spend  some  of  the 
money  she  wastes  on  projectiles  in  build- 
ing a  pier  at  Gibraltar,  travelers  would 
be  spared  the  discomfort  of  this  primitive 
ferry ;  but  I  suppose  she  is  not  obliged  to 
concern  herself  with  travelers.  It  was 
anything  but  pleasant,  in  a  pouring  rain, 
to  bob  up  and  down  beside  the  little 
steam  tug,  waiting  for  «a  favorable  wave 
to  precipitate  us  on  board  her ;  and  why 
our  luggage  was  not  spilled  over  into  the 
sea,  and  soaked  with  salt  as  well  as  rain 
water,  I  do  not  know.  It  takes  the  tug 
half  an  hour  to  cross  the  bay.  Our 
25 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

spirits  were  very  low ;  the  custom-house 
lay  before  us,  and  Cook's  man  had  left 
us.  We  were  on  a  deep  black  sea  of 
Spanish,  not  an  English-speaking  craft  in 
sight.  After  we  left  the  boat,  one  of  its 
officials  led  us,  like  dumb  driven  cattle,  to 
the  custom-house.  The  whole  male  popu- 
lation of  Algeciras  assisted  at  the  exami- 
nation of  our  trunks.  They  stood  looking 
on  with  unblushing  interest,  as  tray  after 
tray  was  taken  out  and  put  back,  and 
they  seemed  disappointed  when  our  keys 
were  restored  to  us.  We  were  then 
waved  forward  to  the  train,  which  was 
waiting  for  us  patiently.  It  would  have 
had  to  wait  a  good  while,  if  there  had 
been  three  or  four  more  passengers.  We 
had  a  compartment  to  ourselves,  and  were 
very  comfortable.  As  soon  as  we  were 
sheltered  from  the  rain,  it  stopped  and 
the  sun  came  out  gloriously.  Our  wet 
clothes  and  recent  discomforts  were  for- 
gotten in  the  delights  of  the  journey.  We 
had  made  provision  for  being  tired  and 
26 


FROM   ALGECIRAS   TO   MALAGA 

for  amusing  ourselves,  but  from  nine,  when 
we  left  terraced  and  picturesque  Alge- 
ciras,  till  twilight  settled  down  over  the 
land  as  we  drew  near  Malaga,  there  was 
not  a  moment  when  we  were  willing  to 
turn  from  the  windows  of  the  carriage 
and  to  forego  the  landscape. 

The  road  from  Algeciras  to  Bobadilla 
had  then  been  open  only  a  year  or  so.  It 
is  an  EngHsh  enterprise,  and  must  have 
been  built  in  the  interests  of  civilization 
alone,  for  I  should  think  there  was  not 
traffic  or  travel  enough  to  pay  for  it; 
the  outlay  must  have  been  enormous. 
There  is  much  tunneling  and  difficult 
grading ;  but  labor  in  Spain  is  cheap,  and 
the  cost  of  running  the  road  cannot  be 
great.  Peasant  women  wave  the  flags 
at  the  crossings ;  a  small  dinner-bell  is 
tinkled  at  the  station  when  the  train  is  to 
resume  its  leisurely  route  after  a  leisurely 
pause.  Very  rarely  the  engine  makes  a 
faint  piping  little  whistle.  The  guard  takes 
off  his  hat  when  he  comes  into  the  car- 
27 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

riage  to  look  at  your  ticket.  It  all  seems 
child-like,  and  innocent,  and  sweet.  The 
absence  of  rush  and  smoke,  and  shriek 
and  cinder  is  Arcadian.  The  arrival  of 
the  train  seems  the  event  of  the  day  at 
every  station,  and  all  the  villagers  are 
collected,  as  well  as  their  dogs  and  don- 
keys, to  gaze  at  it.  Nobody  appears  to 
arrive  or  depart  on  it ;  a  very  thin  mail- 
bag  is  exchanged,  and  an  occasional  jug 
or  basket  would  cover  the  sum  of  the  in- 
voice of  freight. 

The  air  grew  cold  as  we  ascended  the 
mountains,  and  it  was  pitiful  to  see  the 
blue  peasants  in  their  thin  cotton  clothes. 
But  they  evidently  did  not  know  they 
were  cold  and  took  no  means  to  prevent 
it,  such  as  stamping  their  feet  or  walking 
up  and  down  in  the  sun,  but  stood  about 
like  sheep  and  looked  at  the  train.  They 
do  not  wear  any  costume,  and  save  a  gay 
handkerchief  tied  over  the  heads  of  the 
women,  and  a  red  scarf  bound  round  the 
waists  of  the  men,  there  is  nothing  to 
28 


FROM   ALGECIRAS   TO   MALAGA 

distinguish  them  from  the  corresponding 
class  in  the  American  Far  West  or  Far 
East.  The  very  ill-fitting  shoddy  clothes 
of  the  men  might  have  been  made  in 
Chatham  Street,  and  the  thin  calico  of 
the  women's  skirts  been  bought  over  the 
counter  of  any  village  store  in  New  Eng- 
land. But  they  are  picturesque  for  all 
that,  with  their  swarthy  skins  and  dark 
eyes  ;  and  every  group  one  sees  is  of 
interest,  as  is  every  inch  of  the  road  from 
Algeciras  to  Malaga.  The  first  few  miles 
out  of  Algeciras  reminded  us  of  the 
Roman  Campagna ;  if  only  an  occasional 
peasant  in  sheepskin  breeches  and  dan- 
gling coat  and  gay  hat  had  been  in  sight, 
we  might  have  believed  we  were  looking 
our  last  across  the  plain  upon  the  dome 
of  St.  Peter's  rather  than  upon  the  Rock 
of  Gibraltar.  But  Spain  is  very  individual 
in  its  roughness  and  its  grandeur,  its  rich- 
ness of  vegetation,  and  its  poverty  of  im- 
plement ;  it  is  at  once  a  brigand  and  a  baby, 
a  fanatic  and  a  bull-fighter ;  it  is  devout  and 
29 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

dissolute,  contemptible  and  magnificent, 
but  it  is  always  and  inalienably  Spain. 

The  scenery  along  this  new  railway  is 
more  continuously  striking  than  almost 
any  I  remember.  You  go  from  one  range 
of  sierras  to  another ;  you  have  scarcely 
subdued  your  raptures  over  one  wild 
gorge  than  you  come  upon  another  cleft 
mountain  and  tumbling  cascade  which 
obliterates  the  first.  Crags  crowned  with 
Moorish  ruins,  villages  climbing  up  green 
hillsides,  rugged  mountains  and  sterile 
plains,  paint  each  other  out  with  rapid 
brush.  Orchards  of  gray-green  olives,  and 
of  pale  pink  almond  blossoms,  groves  of 
eucalyptus,  sentinels  of  cypress,  palm, 
banana,  and  cork  trees,  —  their  foreign- 
ness  is  fast  growing  familiar.  The  poor 
little  huts,  into  whose  bareness  you  can 
look  through  unglazed  windows  and  open 
doors,  pinch  your  heart  with  pity,  while 
the  upturned  face  of  some  sunburnt  happy 
boy  swells  it  with  pleasure.  Poverty  could 
go  no  lower  than  the  dark,  damp,  sodden 
30 


FROM   ALGECIRAS   TO   MALAGA 

hut ;  nature  could  strike  a  note  no  higher 
than  the  divine  sun  and  sky  and  soil  of 
Andalusia. 

The  names  of  the  stations  slip  past  you 
almost  unheeded.  In  a  land  where  there 
is  no  Baedeker  and  only  two  Cooks,  you 
must  beat  your  own  music  out.  Castel- 
lar,  Ximena,  Gaucin,  Ronda,  Teba,  "  put 
strange  memories  in  your  head "  from 
Moorish  wars  and  the  Marquis  of  Cadiz, 
down  to  the  days  of  Sedan  and  poor 
Eugenie,  forlorn  Countess  of  Teba.  Ron- 
da  was  worth  a  week,  and  we  only  gave 
it  half  an  hour.  At  Bobadilla  we  left  our 
pastoral  railway,  and  took  the  train  to 
Malaga.  The  scenery,  till  the  dark  came 
down  and  made  an  end  of  it,  was  more 
beautiful  than  that  we  had  been  watching 
all  day,  but  enthusiasm  has  its  limits,  and 
a  sunset  effect  through  a  mountain  pass, 
a  tinkling  cascade,  or  a  notable  group  of 
palms  passed  with  languid  comment.  We 
"  ate  them  as  common  things  "  now  and 
did  not  try  to  characterize  them. 
31 


IV 

MALAGA 

MALAGA  seems  the  embodiment  of 
the  Spanish  fate,  fate  meaning  generally 
character.  Here  is  a  spot  which  seems 
designed  by  nature  to  be  the  health 
resort  of  Europe ;  a  perfect  climate, 
absolutely  faultless  for  eight  months  of 
the  year  ;  a  thermometer  which  does  not 
vary  five  degrees  Farenheit  month  in, 
month  out ;  an  inexhaustible  supply  of 
the  purest  water  ;  fruits  and  vegetables 
in  lavish  abundance  ;  fish  of  all  varieties 
and  great  excellence ;  direct  communica- 
tion with  England,  France,  and  Italy  by 
sea,  and  railway  connections  of  course. 
The  city,  in  the  Psalmist's  language,  is 
** beautiful  for  situation."  It  lies  in  a 
rich  valley  about  ten  miles  in  extent,  with 
32 


MALAGA 

mountains  on  three  sides,  which  shelter 
it  from  all  the  cold  winds,  while  on  the 
south  it  is  open  to  the  sea.  The  near 
hills  are  green  with  verdure,  while  red 
and  yellow,  brown  and  gray  mix  in  the 
coloring  of  the  sterile  masses  of  rock  that 
rise  beyond  them  into  rough,  lofty  out- 
lines ;  and  beyond  them  again  are  the 
snow-white  distant  mountains.  The  sun- 
shine is  absolutely  unfailing ;  an  average 
of  thirty-nine  days  of  rain  in  the  year 
makes  the  dryness  of  the  air  phenomenal. 
You  find  you  must  have  had  a  sore  throat 
all  your  life  without  knowing  it ;  breath- 
ing is  a  revelation ;  digestion  takes  care 
of  itself.  The  atmosphere  is  transparent, 
the  sea  and  the  sky  of  a  marvelous  blue ; 
the  soil  is  generous,  like  the  people;  it 
looks  like  rocks  and  rubbish,  but  out  of 
it  grows  tropical  vegetation  without  any 
apparent  moisture.  Palm,  banana,  orange, 
eucalyptus,  and  cypress  trees  fill  the  gar- 
dens, olive  and  almond  orchards  cover  the 
hills.  All  sorts  of  amiable  flowers  which 
33 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

we  cultivate  at  home,  such  as  periwinkle, 
carnations,  oxalis,  and  sweet  alyssum 
wander  over  the  rocks  wild.  The  rose, 
with  all  its  train  of  sweet  summer  flowers, 
walks  through  the  entire  year  in  rich 
abundance. 

And  all  this  wasted,  as  far  as  the  out- 
side world  goes  (and  the  inside  pocket  of 
the  Malaga  citizen).  I  suppose  the  poor 
little  half-naked  children  in  the  narrow 
streets  benefit  by  it ;  and  the  better  class 
of  the  Spanish  population  are  none  the 
worse  for  it,  but  they  might  be  so  much 
the  better. 

Malaga  in  point  of  fact  is  an  uninter- 
esting Spanish  town  with  dirty  streets 
and  squalid  surroundings.  There  is  not 
an  English  chemist  or  grocer  in  the  place. 
If  you  want  things,  you  have  to  do  with- 
out them.  There  are  two  lines  of  tram- 
ways in  the  city,  in  which  the  men  smoke 
with  the  doors  closed.  The  hackney  car- 
riages are  miserable  affairs,  and  the  pave- 
ments in  the  city  so  rough,  you  are  shaken 
34 


MALAGA 

to  insensibility  before  you  get  beyond 
them  into  the  country.  There  is  in  this 
city  of  over  160,000  inhabitants  one  mail 
a  day  which  arrives  about  seven  p.  m.  and 
is  not  delivered  till  the  following  morn- 
ing. There  is  no  postal  money  order  sys- 
tem ;  if  you  wanted  things  from  France 
or  England,  you  should  not  have  come 
to  Malaga.  There  are  few  sights  to  see, 
and  there  is  nothing  to  buy.  They  have 
whitewashed  out  all  the  Moorish  re- 
mains that  were  not  too  big  for  the  brush, 
and  while  they  should  be  commended  for 
trying  to  keep  clean,  it  is  a  pity  they 
should  not  make  more  of  the  antiquity  of 
their  city,  which  was  Phoenician  before  it 
was  Roman,  and  Moorish  before  it  was 
Spanish.  The  modern  Malaga  citizen  of 
the  better  class  seems  to  think  very  little 
of  such  distinction  ;  his  ambition  runs  to 
local  politics  and  to  the  mild  amenities  of 
Spanish  social  life. 

Several  new  avenues  have  been  laid  out 
at  great  expense  along  the  sea,  and  the 
35 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

Camino  Nuevo,  which  goes  up  over  the 
mountain,  is  like  a  bit  of  the  Cornice 
Road.  The  Caleta,  a  large  new  portion 
of  the  city  built  out  towards  the  east,  is 
very  pretty,  all  the  houses  commanding 
views  of  the  sea,  and  being  embowered 
in  verdure.  The  Alameda  is  broad  and 
long,  and  has  fine  trees,  and  ends  near 
the  port  with  a  beautiful  fountain  which 
Charles  V.  ordered  at  Genoa  for  his  huge 
misfit  of  a  palace  at  Granada.  It  never 
got  there,  but  after  many  adventures  by 
land  and  sea,  ended  up  in  Malaga.  The 
Calle  de  Marquis  de  Larios  is  really  a 
leaf  out  of  Paris,  only  the  fine  shops  have 
nothing  that  is  particularly  pretty  in  them. 
The  hotels  are  fairly  comfortable.  The 
theatres  are  said  to  be  bad.  There  is  a 
bull-ring,  but  bull-fights  are  a  joy  of  the 
springtime,  and  had  not  yet  begun. 

From  all  this  it  will  be  seen  that  there 
is  not  much  to  tempt  the  traveler  away 
from  the  Riviera  with  its  incessant  amuse- 
ments and  its  natural  beauties.     But  the 
36 


MALAGA 

Riviera  is  more  or  less  damp  in  all  parts ; 
the  chill  that  falls  at  sunset  is  felt  keenly, 
and  there  is  a  suspicion  of  malaria  always. 
Here  the  transition  from  day  to  night 
brings  no  shock,  and  there  is  absolutely 
no  malaria.  The  death-rate  is  very  low, 
even  under  the  evil  conditions  of  squalor 
and  starvation  in  which  the  lower  class 
live.  If  Malaga  could  be  generously 
brought  up  to  the  standard  of  the  Rivi- 
era towns,  it  could  not  fail  of  popularity. 
Spain  is  not  so  worn  out  a  field  for  the 
idle,  and  for  the  ill  there  is  but  one  attrac- 
tion, and  that  is  health,  here  more  surely 
found  than  there.  A  corporal's  guard  of 
dull  English  people  yearly  come  here  with 
their  invalids  and  take  them  home  cured, 
but  they  do  not  spread  the  matter,  having 
no  interest  in  the  enlargement  of  Malaga's 
borders,  and  not  being  by  nature  of  a  pro- 
selyting turn. 

Living  here,  of  course,  is  cheap  as  com- 
pared with  America  or  with  France.    The 
rent  of  a  villa  on  the  Caleta  or  an  apart- 
37. 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

ment  on  the  Alameda  would  probably  be 
much  less  than  corresponding  quarters  in 
any  winter  resort  in  Europe.  On  less 
favorite  streets  no  doubt  the  rates  would 
be  much  more  moderate.  Servants'  wages 
are  very  low;  the  servants,  however,  as 
a  rule,  are  not  very  good.  The  food  is 
cheap ;  the  meat  ought  to  be  nothing,  it 
is  so  poor,  but  no  doubt  it  has  a  nominal 
price.  The  vegetables  and  fruit  and  fish, 
as  I  said,  are  fit  for  a  prince's  table,  and 
so  are  the  wines.  Sweets  are  the  Spanish 
passion,  and  in  consequence  the  con- 
fectioners' shops  are  full  of  exquisite 
dainties.  Even  the  men  delight  in  eating 
bonbons. 

The  society  in  a  Spanish  city  uncon- 
taminated  by  tourists  is  worth  studying. 
There  are  enough  English  settled  here  to 
take  off  the  dreariness  of  absolute  isola- 
tion. Spanish  as  a  language  can  be  super- 
ficially acquired  in  a  short  time,  and  a 
knowledge  of  the  Spanish  character  with 
like  ease  in  a  like  imperfect  manner. 
38 


MALAGA 

Malaga  no  doubt  is  provincial,  but  so  I 
should  think  is  every  town  in  Spain,  save 
probably  Madrid.  The  married  women 
all  wear  the  mantilla  ;  the  young  women 
dress  in  indifferent  French  style.  (They 
wear  the  mantilla,  of  course,  at  church.) 
The  beauty  of  the  Malaguenas  is  much 
extolled.  The  way  of  living  is  simple. 
There  is  no  dinner-giving,  and  the  even- 
ing entertainments  are  of  the  simplest 
character.  People  pay  each  other  visits 
in  the  evening  as  they  did  in  New  York 
forty  years  ago.  The  walk  along  the 
mole  is  the  great  meeting-place  in  winter, 
and  in  the  summer  all,  even  the  children, 
stay  on  the  Alameda  till  after  midnight. 
The  great  people  have  villas  in  the  sub- 
urbs where  they  go  in  the  summer,  and 
where  they  drive  their  friends  in  the  win- 
ter. But  as  these  are  only  a  few  miles 
away,  the  change  of  air  cannot  be  very 
marked. 

The  lives  and  loves  of  the  young  people 
are  just  such  as  we  have  always  heard 
39 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

they  were,  the  guitar  strumming,  the 
love-making  at  the  grated  windows,  the 
ogling  on  the  mole,  the  murmured  pas- 
sion on  the  moonlit  Alameda ;  nothing 
seems  to  be  nineteenth  century  but  the 
clothes,  which  have  only  an  antiquity  of 
two  or  three  years. 

"Pelar  lapava,"  "plucking  the  turkey" 
is  Spanish  slang  for  the  flirting  that 
goes  on  at  the  grating,  where  the  lover 
stands  on  the  pavement,  and  the  fair  one 
sits  on  the  window-seat  inside.  The  term 
had  its  origin  generations  ago,  when  a 
maid,  being  summoned  repeatedly  by  her 
mistress,  excused  herself  repeatedly  by 
calling  out  that  she  was  plucking  the 
turkey,  while  in  fact  she  was  listening  to 
the  beguiling  words  of  a  lover  outside. 
The  story  is  not  very  funny,  nor  the  ex- 
pression very  suggestive,  but  it  seems  to 
have  embedded  itself  in  the  language. 
Our  Western  "talking  turkey"  no  doubt 
comes  from  it.  The  amorous  ogling  at 
the  theatre  and  on  the  promenade  re- 
40 


MALAGA 

minds  one  of  one's  schooldays,  but  with 
grown-up  men  and  women  in  Spain  this 
seems  to  be  "  how  it  takes  them  "  still. 
Sometimes  marriage  is  evolved  out  of  this 
pastime,  but  usually  it  seems  only  a  fash- 
ion suited  to  the  sentimental  southern 
character.  When,  however,  the  matri- 
monial idea  enters  into  the  matter,  and 
the  youthful  pair  decide  they  cannot  be 
happy  unless  the  turkey-plucking  goes  on 
in  cetermim^  they  do  not  act  in  the  affair 
themselves.  Contrary  to  the  usages  of 
other  countries,  they  do  not  ask  the  father 
on  either  side,  but  it  is  to  the  madre  that 
the  delicate  task  is  assigned.  The  mother 
of  the  young  man  goes  to  the  mother  of 
the  young  woman  and  asks  the  hand  of 
her  daughter  for  her  son.  Fancy  the 
rashness  of  invoking  the  mother-in-law 
element  at  this  early  stage. 

An  amusing  part  of  Spanish  etiquette, 

or  the  want  of  it,  is  the  general  use  of  the 

first  name.     A  woman  always  keeps  her 

own  full  name,  adding  her  husband's  in 

41 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

a  casual  explanatory  way.  For  instance, 
Miss  Mary  Smith  having  married  Mr. 
John  Brown,  her  ordinary  visiting  card 
would  read 

Mary  Smith 
DE  Brown. 

That  would  suit  the  strong-minded  ones 
of  our  own  race  who  revolt  at  being 
merged  in  the  existence  of  another.  A 
Spanish  woman  is  not  called  Donna  or 
Senora  till  quite  past  middle  life.  You 
go  out  to  return  some  visits  and  are  em- 
barrassed to  find  you  don't  know  for  whom 
to  ask  at  the  door.  You  know  you  want 
a  Maria  Theresa,  or  a  Concha,  or  a  Pe- 
pita,  charming  young  married  women 
whom  you  have  met  when  they  called 
upon  you,  but  you  have  no  clue  to  their 
husbands'  names.  They  use  their  cards 
as  little  as  possible,  and  their  titles  not  at 
all.  They  certainly  make  little  pretense 
of  any  kind,  but  are  simple,  kindly,  and 
sincere. 

The  most  original  feature  of  the  Span- 
42 


MALAGA 

ish  matrimonial  manner,  however,  is  what 
is  called  "the  deposit."  That  means,  if 
a  young  girl  wishes  to  marry  a  man  of 
whom  her  parents  disapprove,  she  cannot 
be  forced  to  give  him  up.  On  the  con- 
trary, she  can  force  them  into  consenting 
to  the  marriage,  if  she  is  determined 
enough.  If  she  has  made  a  choice  dis- 
pleasing to  them  any  time  after  the  age 
of  sixteen,  she  has  only  to  go  to  court 
and  state  her  grievance,  and  the  judge 
"  deposits  her,"  that  is,  he  takes  her  from 
her  father's  house  and  places  her  in  the 
care  of  some  disinterested  person.  She 
is  forbidden  to  hold  communication  with 
either  lover  or  parent  for  a  certain  length 
of  time,  a  few  months  generally,  in  aggra- 
vated cases  perhaps  a  year  or  two.  Con- 
vents are  very  convenient  places  in  which 
to  deposit  such  young  persons,  and  the 
nuns  not  infrequently  have  an  opportu- 
nity of  seeing  the  perturbation  and  distress 
which  they  have  escaped  in  leaving  the 
naughty  world  themselves.  If,  the  pro- 
43 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

bation  ended,  the  girl  still  adheres  to  her 
determination  to  marry  the  man  she  has 
chosen,  no  one  can  prevent  her ;  she  can 
demand  her  doty  and  her  parents  have  to 
submit. 

44 


V 

LIFE    IN    A    CONVENT 

If  all  convents  are  like  the  one  on  the 
hill  of  Barcenillas,  they  are  among  the 
least  gloomy  places  I  have  ever  known. 
We  had  a  pretty  suite  of  rooms  opening  on 
a  sunny  corridor.  The  four  great  windows 
of  this  corridor  looked  into  the  cloister, 
where  sometimes,  through  the  blinds,  we 
watched  "  a  bevy  of  the  maids  of  heaven  " 
in  their  deep  violet  habits  and  white  veils 
laughing  and  talking  together  in  their 
hour  of  recreation,  walking  about  among 
the  trees  of  the  garden  with,  if  not  the 
innocence,  something  very  like  the  joy  of 
the  unfallen  Eve. 

Our  pretty  rooms,  a  dining-room  and 
two  bedrooms,  were  on  the  front  of  the 
convent ;  the  eucalyptus  trees,  shedding 
45 


A   CORNER   OF    SPAIN 

their  bark  in  long  thin  strips,  shivered 
their  slender  silver-green  leaves  before 
the  windows.  There  was  an  avenue  of 
them  on  each  side  leading  down  the  steep 
decline  towards  the  gate;  a  garden 
stretched  in  front  between  the  two  roads  ; 
beyond  the  wall  that  shut  off  the  convent 
grounds  from  the  street,  there  were  some 
low  stucco  houses  and  an  olive  orchard 
and  some  fields  on  one  hand,  and  then, 
something  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
away,  the  ground  rose  suddenly  into  a 
steep  sugar-loaf  hill,  a  "Calvary,"  crowned 
with  a  small  white  chapel,  with  white 
crosses  marking  the  stations  up  it.  On 
the  other  hand  were  the  flat  towers  and 
low  roofs  of  the  Victoria,  the  church 
built  on  the  spot  where  the  Catholic 
Kings  pitched  their  tent,  and  heard  the 
first  mass  said  after  the  surrender  of  the 
city.  Behind  the  old  church  rose  vine- 
clad  hills,  and  beyond  them  ruddy  rocks 
and  gray  bald  heights  grew  gradually  up 
into  mountains;  and  above  all  this,  the 
46 


LIFE   IN   A   CONVENT 

glorious  blue  sky  and  the  unfailing  sun- 
shine of  Andalusia. 

Within,  all  was  pretty  and  dainty  and 
scrupulously  clean.  The  sunny  windows 
of  the  corridor  were  ordinarily  full  of 
flowers,  gentle  and  simple,  —  roses  and 
jessamine  and  violets  from  the  garden,  — 
though  it  was  January,  or  wild  flowers 
from  the  mountain-side.  Our  tables  were 
heaped  with  books  from  the  convent 
library  and  from  abroad.  We  did,  as 
nearly  as  mortals  can  do,  what  we  pleased. 
We  were  unmolested,  unhurried,  at  ease  ; 
and  served  for  love  and  not  for  lucre. 

There  were  between  thirty  and  forty 
nuns  in  the  convent,  and  a  large  number 
of  boarding  scholars.  The  sisters  taught, 
beside,  a  school  for  the  poor,  in  the  town. 
Education  is  very  ill-provided  for  by  the 
government,  the  teachers  being  underpaid, 
or  not  paid  at  all,  for  a  year  or  two 
together.  If  it  were  not  for  the  religious 
orders,  it  seems  probable  that  none  beside 
the  rich  would  know  how  to  read  and 
47 


A   CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

write  in  Spain.  The  course  of  instruction 
at  the  convent  was  fairly  up  to  date, 
according  to  our  standard.  According  to 
the  Spanish,  it  was  very  advanced.  The 
order  being  a  French  one,  most  of  the 
studies  were  in  French.  The  English 
classes  made  excellent  progress.  Span- 
iards are  good  linguists  ;  I  met  more  than 
one  man,  who,  never  having  been  out  of 
Spain,  spoke  English  without  an  accent, 
and  understood  even  the  slang  of  it,  and 
kept  up  with  its  current  literature.  The 
women  are  much  less  studious,  but  have 
natural  aptitude  for  the  languages.  The 
young  girls  at  the  convent  were  quick- 
witted, but  indolent.  The  Spanish  parent 
is  even  more  indulgent  than  the  American, 
and  the  soft-heartedness  of  both  fathers 
and  mothers  makes  the  despair  of  the 
nuns. 

The  children's  parloir  was  from  one 
o'clock  to  three  on  Sundays  ;  at  that  hour 
the  grounds  would  be  gay  with  the  bright- 
colored    garments    of    Spanish    mothers, 
48 


LIFE   IN   A   CONVENT 

and  sombre  with  black-bearded  Spanish 
fathers.  The  tons  of  bonbons  they 
brought !  And  the  kissing  and  the  fon- 
dhng  and  the  chattering ! 

The  nuns  have  busy  lives.  The  lay- 
sisters  rise  at  half  past  four,  the  choir- 
sisters  at  five,  and  they  go  to  bed  at  eight 
and  nine  respectively.  They  have  two 
hours  in  all  the  long  busy  day  for  recrea- 
tion, when  they  are  free  to  talk  to  each 
other,  to  wander  about  in  their  garden,  and 
to  forget  their  cares.  Their  dinner  is  at 
half  past  eleven,  and  their  recreation  hour 
is  from  twelve  to  one.  At  half  past  five 
they  have  supper,  and  from  six  to  seven 
again  they  can  talk  and  unbend.  It  is  a 
wise  rule  that  no  allusion  can  be  made  in 
these  hours  to  the  vexations  and  burdens 
of  the  day,  of  which  one  may  be  sure 
there  are  plenty. 

They  were  the  happiest-looking  women, 

taken  all  together,  that  I  have  ever  seen, 

eager  and  interested  and  gay.     And  as 

they  were  of  many  nationalities,  it  must 

49 


A   CORNER   OF    SPAIN 

have  been  la  grace  d'etat  and  not  a  gift 
of  nature.  There  were  Spanish  sisters, 
and  English,  and  American,  and  German, 
and  ItaHan,  and  French,  —  and  yet  with 
all  the  different  characteristics  of  their 
many  lands,  and  all  the  varied  traditions 
of  all  the  forty  families  from  whence  they 
came,  I  never  saw,  in  the  three  months  I 
stayed  there,  a  sullen  look,  or  heard  an 
ungentle  word.  Whether  I  watched  the 
lay-sisters  hurrying  about  on  their  swift 
errands,  or  the  choir-sisters  in  their  work 
about  the  sanctuary,  —  guarding  the  chil- 
dren at  their  play,  —  bending  over  pianos 
teaching  indolent  pupils  music,  —  correct- 
ing piles  of  copy-books,  or  marshaling 
girls  from  one  class-room  to  another,  it 
was  always  content,  satisfaction  with  their 
lot,  that  their  faces  showed.  It  led  one 
to  think  that  the  rule  that  made  these 
all  "  to  be  of  one  mind  in  an  house  "  must 
have  been  divinely  inspired.  St.  Augus- 
tine wrote  theirs  out  over  fifteen  hundred 
years  ago,  and  with  all  the  changes  of 
50 


LIFE   IN   A   CONVENT 

time  and  place  it  seems  to  work  the  same 
results. 

This  order  (that  of  the  Assumption) 
has  many  foundations  in  Spain,  notably 
two  very  important  schools  in  Madrid. 
The  sisters  who  teach  have  to  pass  the 
examinations  and  to  hold  the  diplomas  of 
the  national  schools  in  France,  where  the 
Mother  House  is  (in  Paris)  and  where 
they  are  all  educated.  The  queen  regent 
placed  them,  six  or  seven  years  ago,  in 
charge  of  the  public  schools  in  Manila. 

They  have  also  one  or  two  foundations 
in  Nicaragua,  where,  between  revolutions 
and  pestilences,  their  lives  are  in  daily 
peril.  Every  three  years  they  have  to  be 
recalled  to  France,  to  save  them  from  the 
effects  of  the  deadly  climate,  and  fresh 
ones  are  sent  out  to  fill  their  places.  But 
they  often  plead  to  be  left  longer  with 
their  forlorn  little  charges,  in  that  not 
quite,  but  very  nearly,  God-forsaken  land. 
SI 


VI 

THE    OLD    FORTRESS 

The  convent  grounds  extend  over  many 
acres.  There  is  a  small  garden  at  one 
side  into  which  the  children's  par  loir 
opens.  It  is  full  of  lovely  flowers  and 
palms ;  vines  hang  from  the  wall,  and 
orange-trees  skirt  it.  There  is  on  the 
other  side  the  community  garden,  to 
which  the  children  never  go,  where  the 
nuns  can  be  assured  of  quiet.  There  are 
fine  trees  in  it,  and  a  summer  house,  and 
pretty  little  walks.  The  rest  of  the 
grounds  are  quite  uncultivated.  In  past 
times  the  whole  place  had  been  a  fine 
estate ;  there  are  terraces,  and  a  miradory 
and  cypress  avenues,  and  a  spring-house, 
and  all  sorts  of  remains  of  cultivation. 
But  the  foundation  is  rather  a  recent  one, 
52 


THE  OLD   FORTRESS 

so  that  this  vast  garden  cannot  be  civil- 
ised for  a  long  while  yet.  But  it  is  not 
half  bad  as  it  is.  There  is  a  path  that 
leads  through  an  avenue  of  cypresses 
along  the  ravine  where  the  old  spring- 
house  stands,  to  an  opening,  whence  (in 
January)  you  come  upon  the  sight  of  the 
whole  steep  hillside  covered  with  almond- 
trees  in  blossom.  This  almond  orchard 
belongs  to  the  convent,  and  is  part  of  its 
great  garden ;  it  extends  up  to  the  walls 
of  the  old  Moorish  fortress  of  Gibralfaro 
which  we  see  dark  against  the  sky  from 
our  windows.  The  almond  blossoms  come 
before  the  leaves  ;  it  used  to  look  like 
a  fairy  orchard.  Then  you  skirt  a  deep 
ravine  at  your  left,  peopled  with  a  grove 
of  eucalyptus  trees,  and  gradually  you 
climb  by  the  steep  path  to  their  very 
tops,  and  look  down  into  them.  The  way 
is  rough,  but  the  wild  flowers  grow  in 
diverting  ranks  on  either  hand,  and  you 
see  more  and  more  of  the  wide  view  as 
you  rise,  and  presently  you  are  at  the 
53 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

top;  behind  you  is  Malaga  spread  out 
on  its  wide  green  plain,  its  many-colored 
mountains  rising  beyond ;  and  before  you, 
looking  down  over  the  steep  cliff,  lie  the 
pretty  suburbs  of  the  city,  and  the  mole 
with  its  ships,  and  the  wide  blue  Mediter- 
ranean. What  a  delicious  wind  always 
blows  up  here  !  What  an  exquisite  color 
the  sea  always  wears  !  What  a  green  are 
the  trees  below,  what  a  tawny,  rich  yellow 
the  near  mountains,  what  reds  and  browns, 
what  shades  of  gray  ! 

The  old  fortress  is  at  your  right  hand ; 
on  your  left,  separated  from  it  by  a  ravine, 
and  overlooking  the  same  view,  rises  a 
steep  cone-shaped  hill,  the  hill  where  the 
Marquis  of  Cadiz  was  encamped  while  the 
Moors  still  held  the  Fortress  of  Gibral- 
faro,  and  where  during  the  siege  of  the 
city  he  entertained  Queen  Isabella  and 
her  ladies  at  a  banquet,  while  the  surly 
Moor  looked  out  from  his  embrasure. 
"  The  tent  of  the  marques  was  of  great 
magnitude,  furnished  with  hangings  of 
54 


THE  OLD   FORTRESS 

rich  brocade  and  French  cloth  of  the  rar- 
est texture.  It  was  in  the  oriental  style ; 
and,  as  it  crowned  the  height,  with  the 
surrounding  tents  of  other  cavaliers,  all 
sumptuously  furnished,  presented  a  gay 
and  silken  contrast  to  the  opposite  towers 
of  Gibralfaro.  Here  a  splendid  collation 
was  served  up  to  the  sovereigns  ;  and  the 
courtly  revel  that  prevailed  in  this  chival- 
rous encampment,  the  glitter  of  pageantry, 
and  the  bursts  of  festive  music,  made  more 
striking  the  gloom  and  silence  that  reigned 
over  the  Moorish  castle. 

"The  Marques  of  Cadiz,  while  it  was 
yet  light,  conducted  his  royal  visitors  to 
every  point  that  commanded  a  view  of 
the  warlike  scene  below.  He  caused  the 
heavy  lombards  also  to  be  discharged, 
that  the  queen  and  ladies  of  the  court 
might  witness  the  effect  of  those  tremen- 
dous engines.  The  fair  dames  were  filled 
with  awe  and  admiration,  as  the  mountain 
shook  beneath  their  feet  with  the  thunder 
of  the  artillery,  and  they  beheld  great 
55 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

fragments  of  the  Moorish  walls  tumbling 
down  the  rocks  and  precipices, 

"  While  the  good  marques  was  display- 
ing these  things  to  his  royal  guests,  he 
lifted  up  his  eyes,  and  to  his  astonish- 
ment beheld  his  own  banner  hanging  out 
from  the  nearest  tower  of  Gibralfaro.  The 
blood  mantled  in  his  cheek,  for  it  was  a 
banner  which  he  had  lost  at  the  time  of 
the  memorable  massacre  of  the  heights 
of  Malaga.  To  make  this  taunt  more 
evident,  several  of  the  Gomeres  displayed 
themselves  upon  the  battlements,  arrayed 
in  the  helmets  and  cuirasses  of  some  of 
the  cavaliers  slain  or  captured  on  that 
occasion.  The  Marques  of  Cadiz  re- 
strained his  indignation,  and  held  his 
peace  ;  but  several  of  his  cavaliers  vowed 
loudly  to  revenge  this  cruel  bravado, 
on  the  ferocious  garrison  of  Gibralfaro/'^ 
The  top  of  this  sharp  hill,  the  very  apex 
of  the  cone,  has  been  shaved  off,  and  an 

1  Conquest  of  Granada,  ch.  Iv.  p.  320, 1.  10  :  G.  P.  Put- 
Bam,  i860. 

S6 


THE  OLD   FORTRESS 

ancient  Arab  well,  of  the  heaviest  ma- 
sonry, and  even  with  the  ground,  lies 
open  to  the  sky.  You  lie  face  down  and 
look  over  into  it,  and  see  nothing  but 
profound  blackness,  but  if  you  throw  a 
pebble  over  you  hear  it  finally  splash  into 
the  water  far,  far  below.  Nobody  ever 
comes  here ;  you  scramble  alone  up  the 
steep  face  of  the  hill.  If  it  were  in  Italy, 
or  anywhere  save  in  Spain,  guide-books 
would  tell  the  story,  and  signboards 
would  point  the  way,  and  men  and  boys 
would  dog  your  path  and  mumble  inac- 
curacies, and  gather  in  your  pennies. 
17 


VII 

IN   THE  CONVENT   GARDEN 

Beside  the  old  Arab  well  I  sometimes 
met  a  tall  slender  boy  who  used  to  bring 
his  flock  of  goats  here  to  drink,  scaling 
the  steepest  side  of  the  ascent  with  an 
agility  that  he  must  have  learned  of  them. 
He  always  greeted  me  with  the  grave 
and  charming  courtesy  of  a  Spaniard. 
Sometimes  he  caught  for  me  one  of  the 
delicious  little  kids,  of  which  there  were 
a  dozen  or  twenty  in  his  flock,  and  while 
he  held  it,  I  would  try  to  pat  it,  strug- 
gling and  wild.  Perhaps  the  touch  of  my 
suede  glove  "put  strange  memories  "  in 
its  white  or  kru  head.  We  read  in  the 
Bible  of  the  barbarous  impiety  of  seeth- 
ing a  kid  in  its  mother's  milk ;  perhaps 
patting  one  with  the  skin  of  a  near  rela- 
58 


IN   THE   CONVENT   GARDEN 

tive  may  be  as  unholy  a  practice.  At  all 
events,  the  pretty  mignons  did  not  relish 
my  touch  at  all,  while  they  submitted 
quietly  to  the  brown  bare  hand  of  their 
young  guardian. 

I  met  many  types  of  Spanish  life  up  on 
this  wild  outskirt  of  the  convent  garden. 
On  the  slope  of  the  Marquis  of  Cadiz 
hill,  towards  the  sea,  there  was  a  solitary 
peasant's  hut,  which  was  approached  by 
a  narrow  crumbling  path,  full  of  rattling 
stones.  Its  awful  poverty  fascinated  me. 
One  failed  to  see  how  human  beings 
could  exist  under  such  conditions.  There 
was  an  anxious  effort  visible,  though,  to 
make  the  best  of  the  means  at  hand ; 
stones  were  piled  up  to  make  a  shelter 
for  the  wretched  goat  at  night,  and  a 
solitary  fig-tree  had  a  little  trench  dug 
about  it,  which  I  saw  a  woman  filling 
with  water  from  a  neighboring  spring, 
bringing  the  water  in  a  small  gourd. 
There  were  two  or  three  vines  about  a 
foot  high,  growing  on  the  steep  slope, 
59 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

which  she  was  irrigating  in  the  same 
painful  way.  A  Uttle  patch  of  beans 
had  burst  through  the  stony  soil,  and 
gave  promise  of  food  later  on.  But  re- 
splendent sunshine  blazed  overhead,  dry 
purity  filled  the  air,  and  the  vast  Mediter- 
ranean, dreamy  and  blue,  spread  limitless 
before  the  stolid,  starved-looking  being 
who  grubbed  about  the  roots  of  her  piti- 
ful vines.  There  is  the  law  of  compensa- 
tion always  to  fall  back  upon.  Once  I 
met  her  towards  nightfall ;  the  wind  was 
rude  and  she  looked  blue  and  chill. 
Thinking  how  much  bluer  and  chillier  she 
would  be  before  the  morning  sun  came 
round  again  to  warm  her  poor  blood,  I 
felt  very  sorry  and  gave  her  a  peseta. 
No  one  could  ever  have  given  her  one 
before,  she  looked  so  surprised  and  stupe- 
fied. After  some  dull  consideration,  she 
put  it  into  her  pocket,  and  went  on  with 
her  work,  and  when  I  met  her  afterwards, 
she  never  looked  expectant  or  gratified  or 
interested.  The  long  years  of  starvation 
60 


IN   THE   CONVENT   GARDEN 

had   done  their  work;   neither  pain  nor 
pleasure  took  much  hold  upon  her. 

I  often  saw  men  snaring  birds  up  on 
this  high  wold.  Their  occupation  was 
illicit ;  they  had  no  right  to  be  there,  but 
it  is  easier  to  wink  at  wrongdoing  than 
to  put  it  down,  everywhere,  and  in  Spain 
they  always  do  the  easiest  thing.  These 
lazy  men,  whose  stock  in  trade  is  a  net 
and  some  little  snares  which  they  pin  in 
the  ground,  come  up  to  this  lonely  spot 
and  lie  on  the  grass  all  day  watching  for 
their  victims.  They  spread  the  net  over 
the  grass  ;  and  for  the  smaller  game  they 
hang  on  a  little  pole  a  birdcage  with  a 
jocund  singer  in  it,  who  lures  the  poor 
little  birds  to  the  fatal  neighborhood. 
Beside  the  snares  are  little  cups  of  seed 
and  water;  and  when  the  pretty  thing, 
after  circling  around  many  times,  stoops  to 
drink,  the  snare  flies  up  and  catches  his 
tiny  leg.  Then  there  is  fluttering  and 
anguish ;  and  the  lazy  Spaniard  lifts  him- 
self up  on  his  elbow,  and,  after  a  moment 
6i 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

of  natural  protest  at  the  necessity,  gets  on 
his  feet  and  goes  to  the  sufferer,  taking  it 
in  one  hand,  as  he  releases  its  leg  with  the 
other,  and  puts  it,  after  examination,  into 
the  larger  cage  where  the  other  dupes  of 
the  day  are  beating  their  wings  against 
the  bars.  Sometimes  two  men  will  lie 
basking  in  the  sun  till  nightfall,  half 
asleep,  beside  the  same  net.  Qui  dorty 
di7ie.  I  think  the  siestas  must  have  been 
the  only  dinner  they  got,  as  a  whole  cage- 
ful  of  the  minute  songsters  would  bring 
them  in  but  a  few  sous.  There  seems  a 
great  affection  for  birds  among  the  poor ; 
sometimes  you  see  half  a  dozen  or  more 
tiny  wooden  cages  hanging  over  the  un- 
glazed  window  of  a  cabin  where  there 
seems  no  other  attempt  to  make  life 
amiable. 

Another  habitui  of  the  convent  garden 
was  Jacky,  the  convent  dog.  The  nuns 
were  strongly  attached  to  him ;  he  was 
only  an  underbred  yellow  cur,  but  he  had 
great  intelligence  and  was  of  a  high  order 
62 


IN   THE   CONVENT   GARDEN 

of  piety.  One  day  he  followed  me  up  to 
the  top  of  the  hill,  trotting  cheerfully 
along  in  advance.  Now  at  the  very 
bottom  of  the  hill,  on  the  other  side,  by 
the  sea,  stands  the  English  chapel,  to 
which  I  was  bound.  I  was  afraid  to  have 
Jacky  accompany  me  ;  I  thought  he  might 
get  into  trouble  with  some  dogs  belong- 
ing to  a  peasant  near  the  bottom  of  the 
hill,  and  I  was  also  afraid  he  would  follow 
me  into  the  chapel  and  create  a  scandal 
among  the  staid  English  worshipers  in 
that  very  bald  temple.  I  took  pains  to  sit 
down  on  a  rock,  and  call  him  to  me,  and 
explain  to  him  that  I  was  going  to  an 
heretical  place  of  worship  to  which  he 
had  no  right  to  go,  and  where  he  would 
not  be  welcome.  He  looked  intelligent, 
but  I  am  afraid  he  did  not  understand 
that  anybody  living  in  the  convent  could 
be  going  to  the  wrong  sort  of  church. 
He  rubbed  his  sandy  paws  on  my  dress, 
licked  my  hand,  and  seemed  to  promise 
obedience  when  I  pointed  back  to  the 
63 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

convent  I  went  on,  but  in  a  few  minutes 
found  that  Jacky  had  made  a  detour  and 
was  trotting  on  some  yards  in  front.  I 
wanted  to  send  him  back,  but  time 
pressed,  and  I  had  only  time  to  get  to 
church. 

When  Jacky  reached  the  turn  that  the 
path  takes  which  leads  to  the  highest 
point  of  the  convent  property,  he  went 
on  ;  my  path  turned  to  the  left,  down  the 
hill  towards  the  sea.  A  straggling  cactus 
hedge  separates  the  two  estates  which 
here  join,  but  there  is  no  fence.  It  was 
as  wild  as  any  other  mountain-top.  I 
hoped  Jacky  would  not  see  me,  but  in  a 
moment  he  did  and  came  hurrying  back 
to  the  invisible  boundary  line.  There  he 
stopped  and  watched  me  going  down  the 
mountain  with  grave  solicitude.  I  then 
was  tempted  to  see  if  I  could  make  him 
forsake  his  principles  and  follow  me,  and 
I  called  him  and  coaxed  him,  but  he  did 
not  stir.  He  stood  still  and  gazed  after 
me  going  my  heretical  way,  but  never  a 
64 


IN   THE   CONVENT   GARDEN 

sandy  paw  did  he  put  down  on  secular 
ground.  He  had  not  lived  in  a  convent 
for  nothing. 

Then  there  was  the  convent  donkey. 
We  did  not  find  him  as  sympathetic  as 
Jacky,  and  he  was  as  obstinate  as  any 
other  donkey,  and  had  to  be  blindfolded 
when  he  was  needed  to  work  the  pump 
which  raised  water  for  the  convent.  He 
quite  refused  to  go  round  and  round  the 
monotonous  circle  when  he  could  see  it. 
It  was  plain  he  had  no  vocation,  but  he 
was  needed,  et  qtte  voulez-vous  ?  So  old 
Francisco,  the  gardener,  put  a  bandage 
round  his  eyes  and  led  him  up  to  the  wide 
platform  that  surrounded  the  pump,  and 
harnessed  him  to  it  and  started  him  on 
his  round.  He  often  shook  his  head  and 
made  restless  gestures,  but  did  not  dare 
to  rebel.  Quite  typical  of  the  Protestant 
idea  of  monastic  life. 
65 


VIII 

A   SPANISH   CURE 

The  cabman  turned  up  out  of  a  steep 
and  narrow  street  into  a  steeper  and  nar- 
rower one  where  assuredly  the  sun  had 
never  penetrated  since  the  Moorish  occu- 
pation. Two  brass  plates  on  a  large  house 
told  us  this  was  where  to  come  to  be 
cured.  A  motley  crowd  beset  the  door. 
In  a  small  vestibule  some  thirty  people 
were  pressing  close  to  a  little  window  in 
the  wall,  behind  which  a  man  sat  writing. 
Halt  and  maimed  and  blind,  in  all  sorts 
of  habiliments,  mixed  in  with  persons  of 
a  higher  grade.  Were  all  the  former 
being  treated  free  ?  and  what  was  the 
meaning  of  this  beneficence  } 

A  few  words  with  a  Civil  Guard  un- 
deceived us.  This  was  a  government 
66 


A   SPANISH   CURE 

office  to  which  every  human  being  who 
wishes  to  live  in  Malaga  must  come  once 
in  so  many  months  to  get  his  license  to 
do  so.  It  was  only  an  accident  that  it 
was  in  the  house  where  the  cure  was 
established.  Houses  in  Malaga  seem  to 
belong  to  a  great  many  different  people, 
and  to  be  sold  and  let  in  parcels.  Some 
friends  told  me  that  on  one  occasion, 
wishing  to  have  another  entrance  to  their 
place,  they  had  arranged  to  buy  a  certain 
small  house  which  adjoined  their  grounds, 
and  faced  the  street.  The  negotiations 
were  nearly  completed,  they  were  on  the 
point  of  signing  the  papers,  when  they 
discovered  that  they  had  bought  every- 
thing but  "iYi^faqade  of  the  house.  That 
they  could  not  have.  It  was  quite  out  of 
the  question,  and  the  negotiations  were 
declared  at  an  end. 

It  must  be  very  tiresome  to  be  obliged 

to  read  your  title  clear  to  your  back  stairs 

before  you  can  go  up  and  down  them  with 

confidence,  and  to  be  anxious  lest  you  are 

(^1 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

not  well  fortified  legally  in  the  possession 
of  your  linen-closet.  To  find  a  favor- 
ite corner  in  your  library  slipping  from 
your  grasp,  or  a  nursery  closet  sudden- 
ly brought  into  court,  how  unsettling ! 
Law  in  Spain  is  a  terror  to  litigants. 
A  lady  told  me,  that  in  purchasing  a 
piece  of  property,  the  largest  room  in  the 
house,  and  it  was  a  very  large  one,  was 
crowded  by  the  people  who  came  to  sign 
the  deed. 

But  to  our  cure.  The  odors  of  the  mot- 
ley crowd  in  the  vestibule  penetrated  to 
the  house  within.  A  smell  of  carbolic  acid, 
mixed  with  all  other  essences  known  to 
science,  filled  the  air.  The  noise  of  ma- 
chinery, and  the  darkness  which  is  char- 
acteristic of  all  Spanish  houses,  added  to 
the  gloom.  All  that  can  be  conceived  of 
the  horrible  in  dark  plush  and  paper  gar- 
nished the  rooms.  Heavy  curtains  hung 
at  the  windows  and  doors ;  chairs  too 
heavy  to  move  stood  against  the  walls. 
You  were  conducted  from  one  room  to 
68 


A   SPANISH   CURE 

another  by  servants  in  livery  (at  seven 
reals  a  day  probably) ;  to  this  room  to 
wait  till  the  doctor  could  see  you ;  to  an- 
other in  which  he  received  you ;  to  a  third 
in  which  he  tested  your  lungs  ;  to  a  fourth 
in  which,  I  should  think,  your  heart,  or 
some  part  of  your  anatomy  that  was  not 
your  lungs,  was  examined.  The  latest 
appliances  for  the  discovery  of  disease 
were  made  as  conspicuous  as  possible, 
and  polished  to  the  highest  point.  Never 
before  had  I  felt  how  mortal  I  -was,  how 
hedged  in  and  encompassed  with  perils  ; 
how  surprising  it  was  that  I  was  alive. 
The  treatment  which  was  prescribed  after 
a  diagnosis  revealing  nothing  amiss  but 
general  debility,  was,  inhaling  arsenic 
and  oxygen,  and  taking  a  compressed 
air  bath  on  alternate  days. 

This  last  misery  consists  in  sitting  for 
two  or  three  hours  in  an  iron  cage  about 
three  feet  square  and  about  six  feet  high, 
and  of  an  incredible  thickness.  Into  this 
compressed  air  is  pumped.  After  you 
69 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

have  entered,  a  horrid  clanking  noise  ac- 
companies the  screwing  up  of  the  door, 
which  is  done  by  two  attendants ;  you 
feel  that  you  are  past  help.  A  pencil 
and  paper  are  given  to  you  by  which  to 
communicate  with  the  outer  world.  If 
you  are  very  ill  and  want  to  be  let  out, 
you  must  write  your  request  on  the 
paper  and  hold  it  up  against  a  sort  of 
port-hole,  and  if  the  doctor  happens  to 
be  in  sight,  or  an  attendant,  and  can  read 
the  language  in  which  it  is  written,  you 
will,  after  an  interval,  be  let  out,  —  that 
is,  if  the  machinery  by  which  you  are 
clamped  in  does  not  get  out  of  order  and 
refuse  to  work.  I  have  seen  the  doctor 
standing  on  a  chair  and  examining  with 
an  anxious  face  the  roof  of  the  iron  cage 
where  the  door  fastens  on,  and  this  while 
a  patient  was  shut  up  in  it.  It  may  be 
that  his  anxiety  was  not  that  the  door 
would  not  open,  but  I  felt  it  might  be. 
While  in  the  cage  the  sound  of  the  ma- 
chinery by  which  the  air  is  forced  in  is 
70 


A   SPANISH    CURE 

most  unpleasant ;  you  have  a  feeling  that 
your  head  is  being  blown  off.  But  then 
that  is  only  imagination ;  there  is  no  dan- 
ger of  your  head  being  blown  off,  and 
you  have  only  to  reason  with  yourself 
about  it,  and  to  remember  that  nobody 
has  ever  been  killed  in  this  cage,  what- 
ever may  have  been  done  in  other  cages. 
It  is  perhaps  only  imagination  that 
makes  you  think  you  are  cured  after  you 
have  been  incarcerated  in  it  for  the  alter- 
nate days  of  many  weeks ;  but  however 
that  may  be,  most  people  do  think  so,  and 
some  really  remarkable  cures  have  been 
made.  I  knew  a  young  Oxford  man  who 
had  been  brought  to  Malaga  some  three 
years  before  in  apparently  the  last  stage 
of  consumption.  He  was  considered  en- 
tirely restored  by  this  treatment,  and 
seemed  to  be  enjoying  life  as  much  as 
his  fellows.  Whether  it  was  the  cage 
and  the  compressed  air,  or  Malaga  and 
its  incomparable  climate,  I  do  not  know. 
71 


IX 

SPANISH   LIMITATIONS 

One  of  their  limitations  seemed  to  be 
clothes-lines.  It  would  be  a  good  mission- 
ary enterprise  to  send  a  cargo  of  clothes- 
lines to  southern  Spain,  now  that  the 
missionary  spirit  seems  to  be  so  ablaze. 
The  poor  people  wash  their  clothes  on  the 
sidewalks  in  the  city  ;  out  of  the  town,  at 
the  brook  or  spring,  if  there  is  one ;  but 
urban  or  suburban,  the  drying  practice  is 
the  same.  They  hang  them  on  the  win- 
dowsill  or  balcony,  or,  lacking  these,  they 
stretch  them  on  the  ground,  or  lay  them 
on  the  pavement.  You  are  not  infre- 
quently obliged  to  step  over  P6p6's  shirt 
or  stockings,  or  to  pick  your  way  through 
Pepita's  aprons.  They  look,  of  course,  as 
dingy  as  one  would  expect  from  such  life- 

72 


SPANISH   LIMITATIONS 

long  contact  with  the  dust  of  the  city 
stones,  and  the  red  earth  of  the  country 
brookside.  A  walk  which  I  often  took 
commands  from  one  of  its  terraces  the 
interior  of  several  Spanish  gardens  of  the 
better  sort,  and  some  of  the  lower,  too. 
The  same  method  prevails  in  both,  and 
the  clothes  are  generally  dried  as  Provi- 
dence pleases ;  in  very  few  cases  is  pro- 
vision made  for  suspending  them  in  the 
air  by  artificial  means. 

Another  limitation  is  in  the  matter  of 
fuel,  more  stringent,  even,  than  in  thrifty 
France  or  impoverished  Italy.  The  poor 
buy  charcoal  from  bags  carried  on  the 
backs  of  donkeys.  This  is  weighed  out  by 
the  dealer  in  scales  about  the  size  of  those 
we  use  in  the  kitchen  for  measuring  out 
flour  and  sugar.  In  the  better  houses  of  the 
middle  class  there  is  a  sort  of  stove,  with- 
out any  chimney  or  pipe,  of  course,  and  in 
this  there  are  little  compartments,  hold- 
ing a  lump  of  charcoal,  under  a  hole  on 
which  a  saucepan  is  placed.  If  you  need 
73 


A    CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

two  saucepans,  you  light  coal  in  two  of 
these  compartments,  and  so  on.  The 
abjectly  poor  do  not  cook  at  all,  but  live  on 
fruits  and  bread  and  on  a  sort  of  hot  cake 
which  they  buy  in  the  street.  Early  in 
the  morning  it  is  interesting  to  watch  the 
stands  of  those  who  make  what  look  like 
crullers  ''while  you  wait,"  or  flat  cakes 
like  corn-bread.  At  some  of  the  little 
inns  out  on  country-roads,  you  see  the 
cooking  done  on  the  stones  before  the 
door,  and  it  smells  very  good,  though  I 
doubt  if  it  would  taste  so. 

In  January  there  are  generally  some 
bitter  days,  when  the  thermometer  goes 
down  to  forty-two  degrees  or  thereabouts, 
and  the  poor  half-naked  people  suffer 
greatly.  Their  windows  are  not  glazed, 
and  all  the  warmth  they  can  get  is  from 
the  ineffectual  winter  sun.  When  the  sun 
goes  down,  therefore,  they  are  in  a  bad 
way.  About  sunset  you  see  the  careful 
housewife  bringing  out  to  the  door  her 
pan  of  charcoal  which  she  has  arranged, 
74 


SPANISH    LIMITATIONS 

with  sticks  and  leaves  for  kindling,  and 
which  she  lights  and  blows  up  into  a 
blaze.  The  children  stand  gaping  around 
her.  When  the  charcoal  is  well  ignited 
and  the  flame  has  gone  down,  she  takes 
it  inside  and  the  children  follow.  Then 
the  board  shutter  of  the  unglazed  window 
is  barred,  as  well  as  the  door,  and  they 
all  sit  down  at  a  round  table  which  has  a 
low  shelf  near  the  floor  with  a  hole  in 
the  middle,  in  which  they  put  the  pan  of 
coals.  Then  they  place  their  feet  on  the 
shelf  and  thus  they  enjoy  "  their  ain 
fireside."  Fancy  what  it  must  be  in  the 
six-by-eight  little  cabin,  with  as  many  in- 
mates as  there  are  feet  in  its  dimensions, 
as  dark  as  a  pocket,  and  with  an  atmos- 
phere that  you  could  cut  with  a  knife. 
But  while  the  pinching  days  in  winter  are 
few,  the  glorious  sunshine  of  the  whole 
year  must  often  be  lost  by  the  sudden 
chill  and  the  diseases  engendered  by 
exposure  to  the  unusual  cold.  I  have 
often  seen  young  children  in  the  streets 
75 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

of  Mdlaga  with  bare  feet  and  bare  heads, 
and,  to  be  exact,  clothed  only  in  a  thin 
cotton  frock  and  cotton  waist  under  it, 
when  furs  and  flannels  were  necessary  to 
Anglo-Saxons.  They  sit  blue  and  be- 
numbed on  the  stone  doorstep  with  not 
even  the  ceremony  of  the  tattered  cotton 
skirt  between  it  and  their  tender  flesh.  I 
used  to  think,  after  these  occasional  cold 
days,  that  there  was  an  increase  of  shabby 
hearses  clattering  over  the  rough  stones. 
The  death-rate  is  astonishingly  low  in  the 
city,  but  it  is  not  on  account  of  the  activ- 
ity of  the  board  of  health.  Small-pox 
is  always,  not  raging,  but  loafing  about. 
"  Oh,  we  always  have  more  or  less  small- 
pox in  Malaga,"  they  tell  you  noncha- 
lantly.    It  seems  to  inspire  no  terror. 

About  sunset,  one  day  that  winter,  I 
was  looking  down  from  the  mirador  that 
commands  at  short  range  a  little  alley 
below  the  convent  grounds.  I  saw  a  rat- 
tling old  hearse  draw  up  before  the 
entrance  to  the  nearest  of  the  corrals  or 
76 


SPANISH   LIMITATIONS 

courts  of  which  it  is  formed.  An  un- 
usual stir  pervaded  the  court.  Groups  of 
children  stood  gaping  in  at  the  door  of 
one  of  the  little  apartments.  Women 
with  handkerchiefs  tied  on  their  heads 
came  in  from  the  alley  and  gaped  too. 
Inside  the  dark  door  which  the  children 
surrounded,  I  saw  two  candles  burning. 
Finally  a  man  in  uniform  came,  and  after 
a  while,  another.  The  first  went  into 
the  room  where  the  candles  burned,  and 
led  out,  with  a  gentle  kindness  of  manner, 
an  old  woman  whose  cries  rent  the  air ; 
then  he  went  back  and  led  out  a  younger 
one.  Her  hair  was  disheveled  as  if  she 
had  literally  been  tearing  it  when  she  was 
parting  with  her  dead.  I  was  deeply 
touched  with  the  sight  of  all  this  misery ; 
it  was  so  near  to  where  I  stood  that  I 
almost  formed  part  of  the  scene. 

It  was  with  no  pleasant  feelings  that 
four  or  five  days  later  I  heard  that  small- 
pox was  raging  in  the  little  court,  and 
that  it  was  a  small-pox  funeral  at  which  I 

n 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

had  assisted.  I  found  that  it  was  not  con- 
sidered a  subject  for  uneasiness.  No- 
thing was  ever  done  about  fumigating 
the  court ;  there  was  never  the  faintest 
odor  of  carbolic  ;  the  clothes  were  washed 
and  hung  to  dry  on  the  window-sills  ;  the 
water  was  thrown  out  into  the  alley; 
fishmongers  came  crying  down  from  the 
Calle  de  la  Victoria ;  women  gossiped  at 
the  corner ;  everything  seemed  to  go  on 
as  before.  The  paternal  government  of 
the  city  offers  free  vaccination  to  all,  but 
it  does  not  supplement  the  insufficient 
intelligence  of  the  poor  by  enforcing  any 
rules  of  prevention  or  correction  in  the 
matter  of  disease. 

After  a  few  days  we  heard  that  one  pa- 
tient in  this  court,  a  young  girl  who  was 
convalescent,  had  gone  out  for  a  walk,  ^'  as 
the  sores  were  beginning  to  dry  up."  Not 
long  after,  we  saw  a  boy  of  twenty  sitting 
on  the  steps  of  the  post  office,  which  is  in 
the  heart  of  the  town.  He  had  his  trou- 
sers rolled  up  above  his  knees,  and  was 
78 


SPANISH   LIMITATIONS 

thoughtfully  picking  off  scabs  from  his 
legs,  and  dropping  them  on  the  pavement. 
The  young  daughter  of  one  of  my  Malaga 
friends  was  kneeling  in  the  cathedral 
once,  when  a  beggar  came  up  to  her  and 
asked  an  alms,  telling  her,  as  an  excuse 
for  her  importunity,  that  her  child  had 
just  died  of  small-pox.  The  wife  of  the 
British  consul  told  me  that  recently  she 
was  in  a  stationer's  shop  with  a  friend 
who  was  making  some  purchases.  A  child 
with  a  face  disfigured  by  sores  and  with 
her  head  bound  up  was  fingering  the 
note-paper  which  the  shopkeeper  had 
taken  down  for  them  to  look  at.  They 
glanced  at  her  with  a  startled  expression. 
"Oh,"  explained  the  man  reassuringly, 
"she'll  soon  be  all  right.  She's  just 
had  small-pox." 

They  did  not  stop  to  look  at  the  note- 
paper;    the  man   probably  never   knew 
why  they  fled,  but   put   it  down  to  the 
general  eccentricity  of  foreigners. 
79 


X 

A    MIGRATING   FAMILY 

The  diligence  was  an  hour  and  a  quar- 
ter beyond  its  advertised  time  of  starting. 
Maria  and  Francisco,  who  Hve  in  the  con- 
vent lodge,  carried  our  bags  and  wraps, 
and  had  gone  on  before  to  hold  the  dili- 
gence, if  by  any  chance  it  should  be  on 
time. 

We  found  them  waiting  for  us,  sit- 
ting on  the  stone  bench  of  a  little  shop 
shaded  with  vines.  The  woman  within 
obligingly  brought  us  out  some  chairs, 
and  looked  for  no  reward. 

It  was  a  large  open  square  in  the  sub- 
urbs, where  we  had  gone  to  await  the 
diligence.  At  a  fountain  women  were 
filling  their  jars  with  water,  while  men 
and  boys  sat  on  the  stone  benches  beside 
80 


A   MIGRATING   FAMILY 

it.  The  sun  was  warm,  but  the  wind  was 
cold.  We  looked  across  a  green  field  to 
the  cemetery,  the  great  white  gates  of 
which  stood  out  against  a  background  of 
purple  mountains.  But  they  were  closed, 
and  we  could  not  go  there  to  pass  the 
time.  Before  a  wine-shop  on  the  other 
side  of  the  square  some  carts  were  being 
loaded ;  they  might  be  as  interesting  as 
gravestones,  so  we  went  across  and  joined 
a  lot  of  peasants  collected  there,  some 
sitting  on  their  luggage,  and  some  on  the 
stones.  One  cart  seemed  to  be  taking 
only  merchandise,  a  freight  train  as  we 
should  say,  a  goods  train  as  our  English 
friends  would  call  it.  The  carts  were 
two-wheeled  affairs  with  round  canvas 
tops,  drawn  by  five  or  six  mules  each, 
harnessed  one  before  the  other.  The 
wheels  were  enormous,  eight  or  nine  feet 
in  diameter.  The  loading  of  the  carts 
was  skilled  labor.  This  one  seemed  to 
contain  the  household  effects  of  two  or 
three  migrating  families ;  pans,  pots, 
8i 


A   CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

beds,  chairs,  were  all  lashed  on  by 
ropes.  It  was  bound  for  Granada,  and 
would  be  five  days  on  the  way,  a  dis- 
tance of  seven  hours  by  rail. 

A  family  around  which  our  affections 
became  entwined,  in  the  hour  we  waited 
for  the  diligence,  consisted  of  a  father 
and  mother  and  two  daughters,  one  eight- 
een, the  other  ten.  The  father  had  a 
broken  nose,  but  otherwise  was  fine-look- 
ing and  tall.  He  had  an  air  of  distinc- 
tion. The  mother  had  been  handsome, 
her  thick  gray  hair  waved  and  was  neatly 
combed,  her  face  was  bright  with  intelli- 
gence. She  had  not  the  smallest  look  of 
anxiety  even  in  this  ordeal  of  d^menage- 
mejtt ;  in  fact,  they  all  seemed  to  take  it 
as  a  most  agreeable  event.  The  elder 
daughter  was  a  magnificent  brunette, 
with  masses  of  black  hair  growing  low, 
a  rich  dark  skin,  a  perfect  nose,  and  very 
striking  eyes  and  eyebrows.  The  lower 
part  of  her  face,  however,  was  too  heav);, 
and  her  expression  was  occasionally  re- 
82 


A   MIGRATING    FAMILY 

pellant.  She  looked  a  spoiled  beauty, 
and  her  dazzling  smiles  were  all  reflec- 
tions of  the  admiring  glances  of  the  men 
around  the  cart.  The  younger  girl,  on 
the  contrary,  had  a  charming  face,  with 
as  much  regular  beauty  as  her  sister,  in 
addition  to  a  sweet  intelligence.  The 
traveling  dresses  of  the  three  consisted 
of  strait  cotton  gowns  and  aprons,  and 
small  woolen  shawls,  supplemented  in  the 
case  of  the  two  girls  with  a  pink  paper 
carnation  stuck  directly  on  the  top  of 
their  heads.  The  elder  girl  had  a  dash 
of  powder  over  her  fine  dark  skin.  (The 
use  of  powder  is  almost  universal  among 
Spanish  women  of  all  classes.)  Their 
aprons  seemed  to  serve  the  purpose  of 
dressing-bags  and  luncheon-baskets.  The 
beauty,  however,  had  hers  filled  with  a 
very  commonplace  cat  and  a  litter  of  new- 
born kittens, — the  fine-lady  instinct  to 
draw  attention  and  provoke  comment  by 
means  of  pets.  The  men  all  had  a  word 
for  the  cats,  and  for  their  pretty  mistress, 
83 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

who  sat  down  in  a  lazy  way,  and  did  no- 
thing to  help  her  mother. 

The  mother's  apron  revealed  a  curious 
collection  of  things  when  her  husband 
came  to  ask  her  for  some  bread.  There 
were  stockings,  and  bottles,  and  a  table- 
cover,  and  some  photographs  in  frames, 
and  some  keys  and  a  bowl,  a  lot  of  beans, 
and  a  pair  of  drawers,  a  crucifix,  and  a 
china  saint ;  and  from  the  bottom  she 
fetched  out,  in  answer  to  her  husband's 
request,  a  loaf  and  a  half  of  bread.  I  won- 
dered whether  she  traveled  with  the  cor- 
ners of  her  apron  always  clutched  in  her 
hand  to  sustain  this  not  light  weight,  or 
whether  in  moments  of  relaxation,  or  at 
times  of  emergency,  she  took  off  the 
apron  and  tied  it  into  a  bundle. 

Finally  the  second  cart  was  ready,  and 
the  women  and  children  were  drawn  and 
pulled  and  pushed  up  into  it,  high  up  in 
the  air,  where  they  sat  on  heaps  of  lug- 
gage, with  their  heads  against  the  canvas 
top,  looking  uncomfortable  and  unsteady. 
84 


A   MIGRATING   FAMILY 

The  pretty  little  girl  had  been  put  in, 
showing  through  a  very  bad  pair  of  shoes 
all  ten  toes,  as  she  scrambled  up  to  her 
place  on  a  roll  of  matting.  When  it  came 
to  the  beauty's  turn,  after  a  whispered 
consultation  with  her  mother,  they  both 
declined  to  mount,  and  the  cart  started 
without  them,  with  great  shouting  of  Old 
mul^ !  on  the  part  of  the  driver,  and  of 
vociferous  good  wishes  on  the  part  of  the 
bystanders.  I  asked  the  two  women  if 
they  were  not  going  on  the  cart.  "Oh, 
yes,"  they  said,  they  were  going  to  walk 
beside  it  and  get  in  a  little  later,  where 
there  were  no  people ;  they  did  not  want 
to  show  their  legs  climbing  up.  That  was 
all  very  well,  but  I  doubt  whether  it  was 
all  Christian  modesty ;  it  was  possibly 
carnal  pride  because  their  shoes  were  not 
good.  A  paper  carnation  for  the  top  of 
one's  head  costs  less  than  a  pair  of  shoes 
for  one's  feet.  Shoes  are  stern  and  solid 
facts,  with  which  it  is  difficult  to  deal 
airily. 

85 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

We  watched  the  cart  climbing  slowly 
up  the  steep  ascent,  and  the  two  women 
walking  beside  it,  till  all  were  out  of  sight. 
It  would  take  those  poor  people  nearly  as 
long  to  get  to  their  destination  as  it  would 
take  us  to  get  across  the  Atlantic ;  it  was 
to  them  as  much  of  an  enterprise,  of  a 
venture. 

By  and  by  our  laggard  diligence  came 
along,  and  we  soon  overtook  them,  the 
women  still  walking.  We  wished  them 
good-by  as  we  passed  them,  and  they 
wished  us  that  we  might  go  on  with 
God. 

86 


XI 

IN   THE   mXlAGA    mountains 

We  had  the  choice  of  places  in  the 
dihgence,  and  we  chose  the  two  seats 
beside  the  driver  as  giving  us  some  pro- 
tection from  the  wind,  and  a  good  view  of 
the  mountains.  Besides,  we  could  ask 
questions  of  the  driver,  who  seemed  an 
intelligent  sort  of  man.  We  went  at  a 
snail's  pace  with  our  six  mules  and  our 
not  full  diligence.  The  road  was  a  per- 
fect one,  broad  and  hard  and  smooth  as 
a  table,  but  it  was  very  steep.  As  we 
went  up  higher  and  higher,  the  pitch  was 
very  sharp,  and  the  poor  mules  had  to  be 
admonished  and  incited  with  voice  and 
whip,  and  even  with  kicks  from  the  postil- 
ion, who  ran  along  beside  them  and  cursed 
himself  hoarse  at  the  worst  places.  By 
87 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

and  by  we  were  looking  down  on  all  the 
world.  Malaga  was  far  off  ;  the  cathedral 
tower  was  growing  a  little  speck ;  the 
blue,  dreamy  Mediterranean  mixed  with 
the  blue  sky  as  we  gazed  back  at  it. 
There  was  snow  on  the  distant  Sierra 
Nevadas,  and  a  strong  wind  was  blow- 
ing, but  the  splendid  Spanish  sunshine 
warmed  the  wind ;  the  snow  was  too  far 
off  to  chill  it.  In  summer,  though,  I  am 
told,  this  road,  without  a  tree  to  shade  it, 
and  with  the  sun  beating  down  on  its 
white  flinty  smoothness,  is  something  to 
think  of  with  awe.  It  was  built  fifty  or 
sixty  years  ago  by  convicts,  and  they  say 
that  often  the  poor  wretches  would  throw 
down  spade  and  pick,  and  fling  them- 
selves over  the  precipices,  choosing  death 
rather  than  life  if  it  were  to  go  on  like 
this. 

Along  the  road  at  considerable  inter- 
vals are  low  stuccoed  cabins,  where  the 
workmen  live  who  keep  it  in  order.    They 
wear  a  pretty  uniform,  brown  jackets  with 
88 


IN  THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

red  facings  and  silver  buttons.  They  are 
paid  seven  reals  a  day  (thirty-five  cents) 
and  have  the  little  stuccoed  cabin  to  live 
in,  but  they  have  to  supply  their  uniforms 
and  to  support  their  families  out  of  the 
thirty-five  cents.  Nevertheless  the  post 
is  a  desired  one,  and  to  get  a  man  a  place 
on  the  road  is  to  do  him  a  favor. 

The  Spanish  peasant  may  not  work, 
but  neither  does  he  eat.  They  who 
want  least  are  most  like  the  gods,  for 
they  want  nothing.  The  peasants  of 
these  mountains  seem  to  want  very  little  ; 
whether  their  indolence  is  the  result  of 
being  half-starved,  or  their  condition  of 
starvation  the  consequence  of  their  indo- 
lence, is  a  question.  As  we  went  up  the 
mountain,  we  met  troops  of  them  with 
their  mules  or  donkeys,  looking  like  the 
coming  of  Bimam  Wood  to  Dunsinane. 
Great  fagots  of  dried  weeds  and  branches 
on  each  side  of  the  patient  beasts  swept 
the  ground  and  nodded  high  in  the  air. 
These  are  for  sale  in  the  town  for  heat- 
89 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

ing  ovens  and  for  purposes  of  kindling. 
Probably  if  a  load  nets  a  man  a  peseta, 
he  thinks  he  has  done  well. 

It  was  early  in  the  day  when  our  driver 
took  his  first  meal,  which  was  wrapped 
in  newspaper,  each  thing  in  a  different 
parcel,  a  motley  collection ;  cold  fried 
fish,  radishes,  some  smoked  meat,  raisins, 
and  figs.  Before  beginning  he  asked  us 
to  share  the  repast  with  him,  though  not 
expecting  us  to  do  so.  Spanish  etiquette 
is  so  stringent  on  this  point  that  to  every 
man  who  passed  us  on  mule  or  donkey- 
back  or  afoot,  he  extended  the  same  in- 
vitation, which  they  took  as  simply  as  if 
he  had  said  good-morning.  To  the  pos- 
tilion, however,  it  was  more  than  a  form  ; 
I  suppose  it  was  in  the  bond,  for  of 
everything  of  which  he  ate  himself,  he 
cut  a  smaller  portion  and  handed  it  down 
to  the  man,  who  munched  the  fish  and 
the  raisins  while  he  trotted  alongside  the 
mules,  and  held  the  chunk  of  bread  in 
his  teeth  while  he  ran  forward  to  kick 
90 


IN  THE   MALAGA    MOUNTAINS 

the  leader,  or  dropped  back  to  tighten  a 
strap  of  the  wheeler. 

We  reached  the  Venta,  where  we  were 
to  spend  the  night,  late  in  the  afternoon. 
The  diligence  drew  up  at  the  door ;  sev- 
eral soldiers  were  standing  around  it, 
some  children  and  two  or  three  women. 
It  was  a  shock  to  us  to  see  two  black 
pigs  trotting  through  the  doorway  before 
us,  and  to  find  a  mule  tied  inside  to 
a  chain  which  hung  from  the  rafters. 
Within,  on  the  right  of  the  big  doors, 
which  stood  open,  was  a  room  where  was 
a  counter,  and  glasses,  and  kegs  of  liquor. 
On  the  left,  the  paved  room  ended  in  a 
chimney-piece,  running  nearly  across  the 
end,  some  twelve  or  fourteen  feet  wide. 
The  rafters  above  were  black  with  smoke, 
but  the  side-walls  had  been  whitewashed. 
There  was  one  window,  high  up,  but  it 
was  closed  with  shutters,  and  all  the  light 
came  from  the  door.  There  was  a  little 
fire  on  the  stones  in  the  middle  of  the 
chimney,  a  half-burned  log  and  a  couple 
91 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

of  smouldering  crooked  sticks.  Around 
this  three  or  four  men  were  seated,  A 
gun  stood  in  one  corner  of  the  chimney ; 
the  men  were  rough-looking  peasants ; 
one  had  only  straw  sandals  on  his  bare 
feet.  Three  hungry  cats  came  pressing 
up  close  to  us,  and  the  two  black  pigs 
were  fighting  over  some  treasure  in  the 
corner.  A  blear-eyed  and  unlovely  old 
woman  made  a  place  for  us  by  the  fire, 
and  told  a  boy  to  get  some  more  wood. 
We  were  sorry  the  diligence  had  gone 
on,  for  it  could  not  have  taken  us  to  a 
worse  place,  we  thought. 

The  old  woman  said  she  had  no  room 
ready,  but  we  might  go  and  look  at  one 
she  might  perhaps  arrange  for  us.  It 
opened  out  of  the  one  we  were  in.  Wav- 
ing aside  the  pigs  who  were  grunting 
and  munching  just  at  its  entrance,  she 
pushed  open  the  door  and  took  us  in. 
On  the  stone  floor  in  one  corner  lay  a 
heap  of  rags ;  in  another,  several  bunches 
of  onions.  A  toppling  shelf  held  a  pea- 
92 


IN   THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

sant's  shirt.  There  was  a  table  piled 
with  clothes  and  household  utensils,  and 
she  rooted  out  from  among  them  a  pair 
of  sheets,  which  she  held  up  as  an  ear- 
nest of  her  ability  to  provide  us  with 
beds.  There  was  no  other  furniture  in 
the  room.  The  window,  which  was  not 
glazed,  opened  upon  a  farmyard  where 
goats,  donkeys,  and  pigs  waded  in  deep 
filth.  The  sill  of  the  window  was  not 
four  feet  from  the  ground.  We  went 
out  of  the  room  very  quickly,  and  told 
her  it  was  quite  impossible  for  us  to 
sleep  in  it.  Wasn't  there  a  place  up- 
stairs }  No,  the  soldiers  had  all  the 
room  there  was  up  there.  We  told  her 
she  m7ist  find  us  something  better.  Af- 
ter a  while  she  came  back  and  asked  us 
if  we  would  like  to  sleep  at  the  house 
across  the  way.  This  we  were  willing  to 
do,  almost  thankful.  Anything  to  get 
away  from  the  black  pigs  and  the  black- 
eyed  soldiers  and  the  cut-throat  looking 
men  who  sat  around  the  fire.  The  room 
93 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

over  the  way  had  no  glass  in  the  window, 
and  no  covering  on  the  stone  floor,  but 
those  were  mere  trifles.  They  would  put 
us  up  beds,  and  the  matter  was  settled. 

Then  we  had  to  go  back  to  the  Venta 
to  see  about  our  dinner,  for  these  were 
only  lodgings.  The  old  woman  was 
awaiting  us  with  a  sinister  look  which 
deepened  when  we  began  to  talk  to  her 
of  food.     What  had  she  in  the  house  ? 

"Oh,  everything."  Well,  what .?  Had 
she  butter  ? 

"Oh  plenty.     White  butter,  that  is." 

We  did  not  want  lard,  so  we  passed 
on  to  meat.     What  had  she  ? 

"  Goat's  meat,"  she  said,  though  I  have 
no  doubt  the  goat  was  still  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  life  and  liberty. 

No,  we  did  not  care  for  goat's  meat. 
What  else  ? 

Our  pertinacity  seemed  to  make  the 

situation  serious.     Her  puckered  old  face 

grew  wily.     There  was  a  cock,  she  said, 

that  she  might  kill,  but  he  was  big  and 

94 


IN  THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

very  old.  She  looked  at  us  sharply  as 
she  dwelt  upon  his  age  and  his  tough- 
ness. I  do  not  know  what  she  would 
have  said  if  we  had  told  her  to  cook  him 
for  our  dinner.  He  had  probably  done 
duty  for  a  good  many  tired  travelers  be- 
fore us.  I  suppose,  if  he  was  accepted, 
he  was  never  found,  and  the  time  spent 
in  trying  to  catch  him  served  as  an  ex- 
cuse for  all  sorts  of  shortcomings  in  the 
bill  of  fare.  The  bread  we  had  looked 
at,  and  did  not  want  to  taste.  It  resolved 
itself  into  boiled  potatoes,  potatoes  with 
their  jackets  on,  as  a  protection  against 
the  grimy  pot  into  which  we  saw  them 
put,  for  we  had  followed  the  old  woman 
into  a  dark  little  kitchen  which  adjoined 
the  big  room  where  the  fire  was,  —  and 
the  men,  and  the  black  pigs,  and  the 
donkey  tethered  to  the  rafters.  There 
was,  instead  of  a  stove,  a  bricked  space 
with  holes  in  it,  and  underneath  were  lit- 
tle apertures  for  coal.  She  put  the  pot 
over  one  of  these  holes,  and  got  a  few 
95 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

embers  from  the  smouldering  fire  in  the 
big  room,  but  the  embers  went  out  con- 
tinually, and  there  seemed  no  progress 
made.  Other  guests  were  arriving  all 
the  time;  muleteers  who  wanted  some- 
thing from  the  "  bar  "  called  her  off  con- 
tinually. We  were  in  despair,  for  we 
were  very  hungry.  She  took  all  our  im- 
portunities as  if  she  were  used  to  them, 
and  said  "presently"  and  that  sort  of 
thing,  as  other  publicans  of  higher  degree 
do. 

Rashly  we  resolved  to  go  out  and  see 
if  there  were  no  other  place  where  we 
could  get  some  food.  The  sun  was  set- 
ting. We  walked  along  the  road  with  no 
hearts  for  the  magnificent  mountains  and 
the  resplendent  sky.  Down  in  the  val- 
ley, far  off,  there  were  two  or  three  little 
white  villas  in  sight  with  cypresses  around 
them,  and  terraces,  but  we  knew  they  were 
closed,  and  only  used  in  summer.  At 
last,  we  came  to  a  peasant's  cabin,  with 
its  stuccoed  side  towards  the  road  blank 
96 


IN   THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

of  windows.  From  a  low  door  issued  a 
woman  with  a  shovel  on  the  end  of  a  long 
stick.  An  oven  was  built  outside  the  hut, 
in  which  she  proceeded  to  push  loaves  of 
bread  to  be  baked.  But  they  were  not 
yet  baked,  alas !  We  went  into  the  door 
and  looked  at  the  interior.  The  floor  was 
paved  with  very  irregular  cobble-stones. 
I  never  saw  a  street  as  rough,  and  very 
few  as  dirty.  In  one  corner  there  was  a 
little  heap  of  ashes,  and  as  the  wall  above 
it  was  much  smoked,  I  followed  the  dis- 
coloration up  to  the  ceiling,  and  found  a 
hole  in  it.  That  was  their  "  ain  fireside." 
I  pushed  on  into  the  other  room,  which 
was  all  the  house  contained.  There 
were  two  indescribably  dirty  beds,  and 
under  one  a  very  large  black  pig  was 
rooting. 

We  concluded  to  go  back  to  the  Venta 
and  be  thankful.  The  long  walk  in  the 
keen  mountain  air,  the  lonely  grandeur 
of  the  scenery,  the  gathering  twilight, 
made  us  more  philosophic  and  less  criti- 
97 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

cal.  The  old  woman  met  us  with  the 
assurance  that  our  dinner  (the  two  pota- 
toes) was  ready.  Perhaps  she  had  found 
something  else  !  Alas,  no.  We  went  in 
and  sat  down  by  the  fire,  which  we  tried 
to  beguile  a  little  boy  to  keep  supplied 
with  dried  weeds  and  bits  of  stick.  But 
he  soon  got  tired  and  disappeared.  Very 
few  people  in  Spain  like  to  work.  Three 
people  undertook  that  fire,  and  got  tired 
and  disappeared  before  we  got  our  din- 
ner. The  old  woman  placed  a  table  for 
us.  It  was  a  small  low  table,  and  we 
brought  it  close  up  to  the  fire  inside  the 
chimney.  Everybody  in  Spain  uses  low 
chairs,  which  are  like  dachshunds  in  the 
matter  of  legs ;  after  giving  us  a  couple 
of  these  she  went  away  for  a  cloth ;  then 
for  two  soup-plates,  which  she  washed 
before  giving  us.  Each  knife  and  spoon 
she  seemed  to  bring  from  a  separate 
source,  one  from  a  bureau-drawer,  an- 
other from  a  high  shelf;  she  went  up 
stairs  for  the  cup  and  saucer,  and  I  have 
98 


IN   THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

little  doubt  she  brought  them  from  be- 
tween the  blankets  of  her  bed. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  cold  and  dark- 
ness had  increased  the  circle  around  the 
fire.  A  herd  of  goats  came  pattering  in 
at  the  great  open  door.  I  was  afraid  they 
were  going  to  join  us,  but  they  went 
through  to  the  farmyard,  and  a  boy  shut 
the  gates  upon  them.  A  man  on  a  mule 
rode  into  the  room,  hitched  his  beast  to 
the  swinging  iron  chain,  unwrapped  the 
muffler  about  his  neck,  and  came  up  to 
the  fire  to  warm  himself.  There  were  a 
good  many  children,  more  or  less  dirty, 
swarming  about.  A  soldier  took  the  least 
one  on  his  knee,  and  seemed  kindly  dis- 
posed towards  it. 

Finally  the  repast  was  ready.  The  two 
potatoes  and  some  ashy  salt  were  placed 
before  us.  The  nuns  at  the  convent  had 
insisted  on  putting  up  a  basket  of  lunch- 
eon for  us.  We  had  thought  it  very  un- 
necessary, but  we  opened  it  with  eager 
interest  now.  What  treasures  it  con- 
99 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

tained !  We  need  not  have  ordered 
"dinner."  Butter,  French  rolls,  cold 
meat,  sandwiches,  chocolate,  figs,  raisins, 
cake,  wine,  biscuits,  eggs,  tea!  But  we 
had  two  days  to  stay  in  these  wolfish 
mountains  before  we  could  get  away ;  we 
must  husband  our  resources.  Three  of 
the  hungriest  cats  I  ever  saw  fastened 
themselves  on  the  basket  covers,  and 
raged  with  desire  to  get  at  the  food 
inside.  There  never  were  animals  so 
famished  as  in  these  regions.  Mongrel 
dogs  with  hollow  sides,  thin  goats,  ema- 
ciated cats,  bony  chickens,  gaunt  cows, 
ghastly  horses,  —  if  you  were  not  so  sorry 
for  the  people,  you  would  weep  for  the 
animals.  The  children  who  pressed 
around  us  and  watched  us  eating  were 
not  very  pretty  or  interesting.  There 
was  one,  however,  a  little  girl  of  perhaps 
nine,  holding  a  baby  of  six  months  in  her 
arms,  whose  face  attracted  me.  She  had 
a  dreary  look,  and  was  not  over-confident 
like  the  others  who  crowded  up  to  us. 

lOO 


IN   THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

Upon  questioning  her,  we  found  she  was 
the  little  servant  of  the  house  ;  she  made 
the  beds,  she  watched  the  children,  she 
washed  the  dishes.  Heavens !  It  was 
bad  enough  to  be  the  child  of  such  a 
house,  but  to  be  the  servant  of  it !  No 
wonder  she  looked  dreary,  poor  mite. 
She  did  not  know  how  long  she  had 
lived  there  ;  she  did  not  know  if  she  was 
paid  for  what  she  did.  I  am  afraid  she 
was  not  very  clever,  but  she  had  a  sweet 
little  fleeting  smile  when  we  talked  to  her, 
as  if  she  would  have  liked  to  be  a  child  if 
she  could,  and  play.  I  think  I  never  felt 
more  sorry  for  any  young  creature.  Poor 
little  Concha  !  We  fed  her  with  biscuits 
and  cake,  which  she  took  with  guilty  looks 
around,  feeling  the  unnaturalness  of  such 
prosperity.  We  meant  to  have  given  her 
some  pesetas  when  we  went  away  the  next 
afternoon,  but  she  was  not  to  be  found, 
and  we  had  not  confidence  that  they 
would  reach  her  if  we  left  them  with  the 
blear-eyed  old  landlady.    Concha  was  not 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

in  luck  that  day ;  I  am  afraid  she  never 
has  been,  and  never  will  be.  For  that 
sort  we  ought  to  say  our  prayers. 

After  we  had  eaten  our  dinner,  and  the 
table  was  taken  away,  we  began  to  think 
of  our  lodging  across  the  road.  But  the 
beds  were  not  ready  yet.  They  were 
taken  over  from  the  Venta  piecemeal  to 
be  put  up  there.  No  one  seemed  to  keep 
long  at  any  work.  The  boy  who  was  car- 
rying the  beds  stopped  first  to  get  a  glass 
of  anisetta  for  a  newcomer,  and  then  to 
do  some  other  chore,  and  the  young 
woman  who  should  have  been  making 
the  beds  came  over  to  sit  by  the  fire 
and  talk  to  the  soldiers.  There  was  no- 
thing for  us  to  do  but  wait. 

The  soldiers  of  whom  I  had  been  so 
much  afraid  proved  to  be  our  best  friends, 
protectors  without  whom  we  should  not 
have  been  safe  in  this  remote  wild  place. 
They  were  Guardia  Civile ;  and  what 
Spain  lacks  in  other  things  she  makes 
up  in  the  protection  of  her  suburban  pop- 

102 


IN  THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

Illation.  These  men  told  us  by  the  fire- 
light about  the  service  to  which  they 
belonged,  and  I  heard  a  great  deal  of  it 
afterwards  from  people  I  knew.  There 
are  1600  of  the  service  in  the  province 
of  Malaga  alone,  this  being  considered  a 
very  dangerous  neighborhood.  They  have 
districts  allotted  them,  and  day  and  night 
they  patrol  the  roads,  and  guard  the  houses 
and  property  of  the  scattered  population. 
The  little  white  villas  could  not  otherwise 
be  inhabited,  and  the  poor  peasants  in 
their  stuccoed  huts  could  not  keep  a  goat 
or  a  pig. 

They  are  fine-looking  men,  the  pick  of 
the  army ;  they  must  pass  a  strict  exami- 
nation, and  have  had  a  good  record  for 
a  number  of  years.  This  branch  of  the 
public  service  is  much  sought  after.  I 
ventured  to  ask  the  pay.  Three  pesetas 
(sixty  cents)  a  day,  and  a  house.  But  out 
of  this  they  supply  their  uniforms,  and  it 
is  always  insisted  on  that  their  appoint- 
ments be  in  order.  I  noticed  that  even 
103 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

their  boots  were  well  blacked.^  One  tall 
young  fellow  was  rubbing  between  his 
slender  hands  a  chain,  which  he  was 
cleaning.  He  showed  it  to  me,  and  ex- 
plained its  use  to  handcuff  a  prisoner  and 
bring  him  in,  covered  with  a  pistol.  The 
guard's  hands  were  so  slender  I  should 
have  thought  these  gyves  that  fitted  him 
would  have  been  too  tight  for  an  ordinary 
evil-doer.  But  the  hands  and  feet  of 
Spaniards  of  all  classes  are  very  small ; 
they  really  use  them  so  little,  it  is  pos- 
sible, is  it  not,  that  they  are  in  process  of 
absorption,  and  that  three  or  four  cen- 
turies hence  this  peninsula  may  be  inhab- 
ited by  a  race  of  unhanded  and  unfooted 
beings. 

The  Guardia  Civile  are  naturally  great 
favorites  with  the  families  whose  property 
they  protect ;  they  have  the  entree  of  all 
the  kitchens,  and  the  servants  offer  them 
the  hospitality  of  the  fire,  and  often,  no 

1  Their  arms  and  ammunition  are  supplied  them  by  the 
state. 

104 


IN   THE   MALAGA  MOUNTAINS 

doubt,  a  surreptitious  glass  of  wine  and 
plate  of  oily  dainty.  In  one  case  I  know 
of,  there  had  been  much  disturbance  in 
the  neighborhood,  and  after  my  friends 
came  to  their  villa,  the  anxious  mother 
of  the  family  could  not  sleep  at  night 
for  thinking  about  the  brigands.  So  she 
made  a  requisition  for  two  extra  guards, 
and  the  paternal  government  gave  them 
to  her,  to  take  her  children  out  to  walk, 
and  to  watch  the  house  day  and  night. 

In  consequence  of  these  intimate  rela- 
tions the  guards  know  all  the  family  his- 
tory of  the  neighborhood  to  which  they 
are  assigned,  and  are  a  little  given  to 
gossip,  their  only  failing.  One  of  those 
around  the  fire  that  night  recognized  my 
companion  as  a  little  girl  he  had  once 
been  detailed  to  take  out  to  walk,  and  he 
was  very  much  pleased  that  she  recalled 
his  name  and  face. 

The  manners  of  these  men,  and  of  all 
the  servants  in  Spain,  are  very  free  from 
constraint,  and  yet  are  not  impertinent. 
I  OS 


A  CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

One  would  say  it  was  a  survival  of  the 
old  Catholic  feeling  of  equality  before 
God.  They  are  warm-hearted  and  they 
quickly  attach  themselves  to  the  families 
they  serve  ;  an  easy  simple  relationship 
grows  up  between  them.  They  have  not 
aspirations,  like  our  native  and  Irish 
underlings.  You  seldom  see  one  of  them 
in  a  distinctive  dress  ;  the  maids  accom- 
pany their  mistresses  in  the  street,  wear- 
ing a  plain  print  skirt,  a  shawl,  and  a 
handkerchief  tied  over  the  head.  The 
coachmen  on  the  boxes  of  private  car- 
riages have  the  same  sort  of  cap  which 
is  worn  by  the  drivers  of  cabs,  and  very 
often  have  not  even  that  mark  of  their 
calling,  but  wear  the  sombrero  general  to 
the  lower  class.  I  should  say  the  tie  be- 
tween master  and  servant  in  Spain  was 
much  like  that  between  the  Southern 
slave-owner  and  his  house-servants,  before 
the  war. 

Having  got  over  my  fear  of  them,  the 
guards  and  the  peasants  around  the  fire 
1 06 


IN   THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

were  very  interesting,  and  were  civil  after 
their  lights.  I  shall  always  think  our 
prejudice  against  the  Spanish  is  based 
upon  their  physical  differences  from  us. 
We  mislike  them  for  their  complexion, 
which  is  swarthy,  and  for  their  features, 
which  are  forbidding.  The  treachery  is 
a  matter  of  coloring,  and  the  cruelty,  of 
outline.  They  are  the  kindest  people  in 
the  world,  and  as  honest  as  —  ttotcs  mitres, 
I  have  never  been  cheated  by  a  trades- 
man in  Spain,  I  have  never  been  uncivilly 
treated  by  one.  They  are  so  slow  and 
tiresome,  I  should  not  dare  to  say  I  have 
never  been  uncivil  to  them. 

But  there  was  no  incivility  on  either  side 
that  night.  They  were  much  interested 
in  me  and  my  furs.  Each  newcomer  was 
told,  "  She  is  a  North  American,"  and  as 
they  have  not  the  habit  of  disguising  their 
curiosity,  but  are  entirely  children  of  Na- 
ture, they  gazed  at  me  for  long  spaces 
without  removing  their  black  eyes  from 
my  face  for  a  moment.  They  inquired 
107 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

into  the  nature  and  habits  of  the  animals 
from  which  my  furs  were  taken.  One  of 
the  guards  said,  when  I  shivered  at  the 
strong  wind  blowing  down  the  great  chim- 
ney on  my  head,  "  Why  is  she  so  cold  ? 
She  comes  from  a  colder  place  than  this." 
My  companion  explained  that  in  my  coun- 
try they  had  better  fires  than  here.  Then 
they  piled  more  weeds  on,  and  we  had 
five  minutes  of  blaze,  succeeded  by  ten 
of  gloom. 

Finally  we  were  told  that  our  beds  in 
the  cottage  opposite  were  ready,  and  we 
crossed  the  broad  white  road  in  a  glory 
of  moonlight  which  showed  us  the  moun- 
tains lying  like  a  sea  below  us,  and 
entered  our  low  dark  room.  It  was  so 
sharply  cold  that  we  had  to  ask  for  hot 
water  to  fill  our  India-rubber  bags.  That 
seemed  a  little  thnig  to  ask,  but  I  have 
seen  a  five-course  dinner  cooked  with  less 
expenditure  of  time  and  effort.  First 
the  water  had  to  be  sent  for  to  the 
Venta ;  all  the  water  here  is  brought 
1 08 


IN   THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

from  a  picturesque  fountain  a  good  way 
down  the  mountain,  called  "The  Queen's 
Fountain,"  where  Isabella  once  stopped 
to  drink,  and  where  the  arms  of  Castile 
are  still  visible  under  many  coats  of 
whitewash.  The  men  bring  the  water  in 
earthen  jars  on  the  backs  of  mules,  and 
it  may  well  be  believed  it  is  not  used 
lavishly  for  household  purposes.  Pro- 
bably it  saves  their  lives  that  there  is  no 
water  near  their  dwellings,  for  the  contam- 
ination could  not  be  other  than  certain, 
considering  their  habits. 

After  the  water  was  got,  the  fire  had 
to  be  renewed ;  weeds  were  hunted  for 
outside  and  after  long  delay  ignited,  and 
then  the  blaze  died  down  before  the 
water,  set  on  the  ashy  hearth  in  a  little 
pipkin,  had  approached  the  boiling  point. 
More  weed  -  hunting,  more  striking  of 
matches,  more  failure  to  get  up  any  heat. 
This  was  repeated  several  times  before 
the  water  was  hot  enough  to  put  in  the 
bags.  All  the  water  heated  in  this  way 
109 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

had  an  insufferable  smell  of  smoke,  and 
for  our  subsequent  meals,  when  we  wanted 
to  make  tea,  it  was  the  same. 

Our  cot-beds  were  clean,  I  hope,  but 
they  were  not  comfortable.  The  pillow 
was  always  slipping  off  at  the  head,  and 
the  hot-water  bag  slipping  out  at  the 
foot,  and  the  blankets  slipping  down  at 
the  side.  The  darkness  was  profound,  as 
was  the  silence.  About  two  o  'clock  the 
cold  grew  intense.  A  man  came  singing 
along  with  the  bells  on  his  mule  jingling, 
and  his  heaw  steps  resounding  on  the 
flinty  road.  The  moon,  as  I  looked 
through  a  chink  in  the  board  shutter,  was 
brilliant.  I  did  not  know  whether  to 
think  of  him  as  just  going  forth  to  his 
day's  toil,  or  just  coming  back  from  it. 
In  either  case  I  felt  sure  he  would  not 
have  sung  so  lustily  if  he  had  had  an  evil 
conscience,  and  I  was  grateful  that  he 
did  not  push  open  the  door,  to  which 
there  was  no  bolt  or  lock,  and  help  him- 
self to  a  few  of  the  pesetas  in  my  purse, 
no 


IN   THE   MALAGA   MOUNTAINS 

which  would  have  saved  him  many  weeks 
of  hard  work  and  given  him  much  re- 
pose. 

Our  breakfast  was  taken  under  many 
difficulties,  and  our  luncheon  was  not 
more  happy.  While  there  were  goats  and 
pigs  around  our  table  in  the  Venta,  there 
were  cats  and  hens  perching  on  it  and 
on  us  in  the  cottage.  Later,  we  went  to 
ride  on  donkeys,  and  inspected  a  villa  for 
the  summer,  far  down  in  the  valley.  It 
was  fascinating,  with  its  terraces  and  cy- 
presses and  olive  orchards,  but  too  low, 
the  road  leading  to  it  frightfully  steep, 
and  the  price  charged  for  it  exorbitantly 
high.  The  price,  the  man  said,  was  two 
pesetas  a  day.  That,  we  recognized  by  a 
gleam  in  his  eye,  was  only  the  asking 
price.  It  could  no  doubt  have  been  got 
for  a  peseta  a  day,  and  a  civil  guard  or 
two  thrown  in.  But  I  do  not  like  to  be 
in  a  valley  when  there  is  a  mountain-top 
where  I  might  be,  and  I  concluded  not  to 
spend  the  summer  there. 
Ill 


A   CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

"  There  be  women  fair  as  she 
Whose  verbs  and  nouns  do  more  agree." 

Switzerland,  though  less  of  an  experi- 
ence, has  the  advantage  of  more  cleanli- 
ness and  convenience.  And  though  one 
would  sacrifice  a  good  deal  to  be  where 
the  blue  Mediterranean  and  the  white 
Sierras  meet,  optically,  it  is  good  not  to 
be  unclean,  and  it  is  better  not  to  be 
starved,  and  it  is  best  not  to  be  "  mur- 
dered and  kidnapped  and  sold  for  a  slave," 
as  sometimes  is  said  to  happen  in  this 
land  of  Andalusia. 

112 


XII 

BEHIND   THE   SCENES    IN   THE   MALAGA 

BULL-RING 

The  dust  lay  thick  on  the  properties 
of  the  bull-ring  in  Malaga,  the  March 
day  on  which  we  went  through  it.  As 
the  bulls  do  not  fight  their  best  till  the 
spring  fires  their  blood,  it  is  generally 
late  April  or  early  May  when  they  are 
brought  from  their  wide  sunny  pastures 
to  be  penned  in  the  dark  toril  for  a 
night  and  a  day  before  they  are  let  loose 
in  the  arena.  They  are  driven  in  by 
night  from  the  farm  where  they  are  bred, 
a  few  miles  out  of  the  city.  I  am  told 
by  people  who  live  in  the  Cal6ta  (the 
pretty  suburb  of  Malaga,  where  by  the 
sea  are  many  charming  villas)  that  it  is 
quite  a  thrilling  sensation  to  hear,  in  the 
113 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

dead  of  night,  the  ringing  of  the  bells 
that  announce  the  approach  of  the  bulls 
for  the  next  day's  fight.  First,  far  in 
advance  of  the  cortege,  come  men  on 
horseback,  carrying  torches  and  ringing 
bells,  to  clear  the  way  and  to  warn  of 
danger.  Then  on  a  wild  gallop  come  the 
bulls,  —  each  one  guarded  on  either  side 
by  a  tame  bull,  —  detachments  of  mounted 
picadores  flanking  them.  The  rushing 
cavalcade,  the  ringing  of  the  bells,  the 
torches  flaring  in  the  darkness,  the  shak- 
ing of  the  ground  under  the  many  rapid- 
beating  hoofs,  they  tell  me,  is  quite  dra- 
matic. When  the  bull-ring  is  reached,  — 
it  stands  beside  the  sea,  just  outside  the 
city  limits,  —  there  are  fences  which  con- 
tract gradually  up  to  the  gate  that  leads 
into  the  toril.  The  wild  creatures  find 
their  midnight  gallop  suddenly  ended  at 
this  converging  barrier.  There  is  rarely 
any  trouble  in  getting  them  in,  I  believe, 
for  their  guardians,  the  tame  bulls,  exert 
the  same  influence  over  them  that  shep- 
114 


THE   MALAGA   BULL-RING 

herd  dogs  do  over  the  flocks  they  guard. 
The  intelligence  of  these  animals  is  won- 
derful, and  the  submission  of  the  untamed 
brutes  of  the  mountains  no  less  so.  In 
the  rare  cases  when  a  bull  has  to  be 
brought  out  of  the  arena,  or  when  any- 
thing has  gone  wrong  in  the  ring,  one  of 
these  bulls  will  trot  in  and  bring  its  re- 
fractory charge  off  the  field  in  the  "gen- 
tly firm"  manner  recommended  by  Miss 
Edgeworth.  He  seems  to  need  only  a 
cap  and  an  apron  to  look  an  old  bonne 
sent  to  bring  a  kicking,  mutinous  child 
back  to  the  nursery.  It  is  a  pity  that 
such  intelligence  should  be  slaughtered 
in  the  shambles  or  sacrificed  in  the  ring ; 
for  I  suppose  tame  bulls  and  wild  ones 
are  recruited  from  the  same  ranks  and 
are  capable  of  the  same  education. 

Once  in  the  toril,  they  must  be  incar- 
cerated in  their  several  cells,  and  this  I 
should  think  would  be  the  least  easy  part 
of  the  programme.  There  are  eight  cells, 
perfectly  dark  but  for  a  small  latticed 
IIS 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

trap  at  the  top.  Through  this,  which 
opens  on  the  bridge  above,  their  keepers 
deal  with  them  at  a  safe  distance,  after 
they  are  got  in.  The  door  of  each  is 
opened  by  a  rope  when  his  hour  of  fate 
has  struck  and  he  is  to  be  loosed  into 
the  ring.  From  this  bridge  the  keepers 
let  down  his  food  during  the  night  and 
day  that  he  is  in  his  "  condemned  cell ; " 
and  from  here,  reaching  down,  they 
plunge  into  him  the  cruel  long  dart  bear- 
ing a  gay  flaunting  rosette  which  is  to 
decorate  him  for  his  debut,  and  to  pique 
him  into  greater  vivacity  when  he  makes 
his  entree.  I  fancy  the  rosette  is  just 
now  out  of  fashion :  it  is  perhaps  as  bad 
form  for  a  bull  to  wear  a  rosette  as  it 
was  a  few  years  ago  for  a  girl  to  wear 
a  necklace.  None  of  the  bulls  I  saw  at 
Seville  a  month  later  had  rosettes ;  and  a 
Seville  bull  is  the  glass  of  fashion  and  the 
mould  of  form. 

We  saw  the  many  stalls  for  the  poor 
doomed  horses,  and  the  infirmaries  for 
ii6 


THE   MALAGA   BULL-RING 

the  wounded  ones  who  have  escaped 
death  at  the  horns  of  the  bull  in  their 
first  encounter,  and  who  are  being  nursed 
up  for  a  second,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped 
final  one.  For  the  managers  are  thrifty, 
and  use  up  every  shred  of  horseflesh  left 
over  from  fight  to  fight.  Therefore,  it  is 
best  for  the  poor  beast  to  be  dead  and 
done  with  it,  when  once  he  is  enlisted. 
We  went  also  through  the  many  rooms 
in  which  the  properties  are  kept.  The 
plumed  hats  of  the  picadors  were  dusty 
and  shabby,  and  I  hope  were  renovated 
before  the  season  opened ;  the  ponderous 
saddles  and  the  armor  of  the  picadors 
were  hanging  in  dusty  rows  from  the 
walls.  The  weight  of  one  stirrup  was  as 
much  as  I  could  lift ;  the  spears  were  like 
Goliath's,  each  heavy  as  a  weaver's  beam. 
I  scarcely  remember  all  the  paraphernalia 
we  saw,  roomful  after  roomful.  After- 
ward we  went  to  the  hospital  on  the 
first  floor,  with  its  sickening  array  of  cot- 
beds  and  medicine-chests  and  stretchers. 
117 


A   CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

Except  that  human  nature  gets  used  to 
everything,  I  should  think  it  would  take 
the  heart  out  of  all  the  actors  on  the 
scene,  to  see  this  preparation  for  the 
possible. 

But  there  was  one  provision  that 
touched  me  very  much :  it  was  the 
chapel.  A  chapel  in  a  bull-ring !  —  what 
could  be  more  incongruous  }  And  yet 
wheri  one  comes  to  think  of  it,  what 
could  be  more  humane,  more  Christian, 
if  you  will  ?  The  Catholic  Church  does 
all  it  can  to  suppress  the  bull-ring ;  it  has 
a  distinct  quarrel  with  it.  Any  priest  in 
Spain  attending  a  bull-fight  does  it  un- 
der penalty  of  excommunication.  He  is 
willfully  committing  a  mortal  sin.  The 
best  and  most  devout  of  the  Catholic 
laity  absolutely  refuse  to  assist  at  these 
brutal  scenes.  But  the  multitude,  the 
careless,  the  go-as-near-to-perdition-as- 
you-can-and-be-saved  multitude  go,  and 
will  go  till  Spain  ceases  to  be  Spain  and 
the  world  is  made  over.  The  Church 
ii8 


THE   MALAGA   BULL-RING 

knows  this,  and  might  as  well  issue  an 
edict  against  earthquakes  as  against  bull- 
fights. But  she  yearns  over  these  poor 
small-souled  children  of  hers,  and  with  a 
motherly  care  provides  for  them  what 
she  can  of  eternal  safety.  There  shall 
always  be  a  priest  in  attendance  behind 
the  scene  at  every  bull-fight,  to  absolve 
the  dying,  to  administer  the  last  rites,  to 
say  a  word  of  hope,  to  hear  a  word  of  re- 
pentance. One  remembers  the  hopeful 
epitaph  on  the  tomb  of  the  fox-hunting 
squire  cut  off  in  his  sins  :  — 

"  Between  the  stirrup  and  the  ground 
He  mercy  sought  and  mercy  found." 

I  suppose  the  same  charitable  hope 
may  cover  the  Andalusian  as  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  pleasure-seeker. 

I  wanted  to  go  through  the  chapel, 
into  which  I  could  only  look  from  the 
staircase  leading  along  the  bridge  above 
the  toril  to  the  infirmary.  The  keeper, 
however,  tried  the  door  and  found  it 
locked.  The  chaplain,  he  said,  had  the 
119 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

key.  It  was  but  a  poor  sort  of  place, 
looking  down  from  the  stairway.  There 
was  a  wooden  altar,  now  bare  of  every- 
thing, and  above  it,  in  a  ruddy  haze,  the 
fair  face  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  shone 
through  a  transparency.  Poor  wounded, 
careless-liver,  brought  in  bleeding  from 
the  arena  to  breathe  his  last  breath  here, 
how  that  face  would  shine  upon  him 
from  his  far-past  innocent  youth  ;  how 
the  "  church-blest  things "  about  him 
would  bring  back  days  of  first  commun- 
ion and  confirmation  and  his  mother's 
knee !  Perhaps  the  time  between  those 
happy  days  and  this  awful  last  one  may 
not  have  been  so  very  sinful  as  it  looks 
to  us,  virtuous  men  and  women  of  a 
more  enlightened  sphere.  There  may  be 
good-living  toreadors,  perhaps,  according 
to  their  lights,  and  salvable  picadors,  it  is 
even  possible.  Heredity  and  surround- 
ings count  for  a  great  deal  in  a  world 
where  not  more  than  one  in  sixty  thou- 
sand lives  up  to  his  highest  possibility. 

120 


THE   MALAGA   BULL-RING 

The  Church,  Hke  a  faithful  mother 
whose  wayward  son  roams  nightly  in  for- 
bidden ways,  waits  up  for  him  and  trims 
the  waning  lamp  and  says  her  prayers, 
and  very  often  is  rewarded  by  receiving 
him  into  her  arms  at  the  eleventh  hour. 
Whatever  other  faults  we  may  find  with 
Rome,  we  cannot  say  that  she  is  narrow 
in  the  limits  that  she  sets  to  the  eternal 
mercy.  Not  even  the  Universalists  them- 
selves, it  seems  to  me,  give  wider  hope. 
To  the  charity  of  alms,  she  adds  the 
charity  of  prayers,  —  and  prayers  that 
seem  to  have  no  end,  through  hungry 
generation  after  hungry  generation  :  — 

"  Like  circles  widening  round  upon  a  clear  blue  river 
Age  after  age  the  wondrous  sound  is  echoed  on  forever ;  " 

prayers  of  saints  that  can  never  have  an 
end,  till  all  the  world  is  redeemed  and 
gathered  about  the  feet  of  God.  She 
only  seems  to  shut  out  from  hope  the 
determinedly  impenitent,  the  willful  sin- 
ners, the  lost  ones  who  curse  God  and 
die,  —  who  with   intention   and   without 

121 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

excuse  refuse  God's  mercy  through  hfe 
and  at  death.  Masses  upon  Masses  she 
says  for  the  Protestant  dead ;  hours  upon 
hours  her  monks  and  nuns  pray  before 
the  altar  for  the  world  that  will  not  pray 
for  itself ;  confraternities  that  count  their 
members  by  the  million  offer  daily  inter- 
cessions for  the  eternal  safety  of  the 
careless  ones  who  say  no  prayers  at  all, 
and  for  the  blinded  ones  whose  prayers 
she  thinks  have  not  reached  far  enough. 

The  chaplain  of  the  bull-ring  perhaps 
might  have  told  me  some  interesting 
things,  but  I  did  not  meet  him,  and  I 
could  only  speculate  about  his  experi- 
ences with  the  victims  of  the  national 
sport.  In  the  old  days,  when  it  was  a 
nobler  one.  Mass  was  said  before  every 
fight,  and  all  who  were  to  be  exposed  to 
danger  assisted  at  it.  That  of  course  is 
forbidden  now,  for  of  nothing  is  the 
Church  more  careful  than  of  any  profa- 
nation of  the  Blessed  Sacrament. 

122 


XIII 

A   SPANISH    MILK-ROUTE 

Every  morning  while  I  was  at  the 
convent  I  heard  the  tinkle  of  cow-bells 
under  my  window,  and  at  last  I  had 
the  curiosity  to  look  out,  and  through 
the  bars  I  saw  the  way  they  deliver  milk 
in  Andalusia.  A  slow  procession  of  three 
men,  two  cows  and  two  calves,  winds  up 
the  road  bordered  by  eucalyptus  and  palm 
and  orange  trees,  and  stops  before  the 
great  door  of  the  convent.  A  white-veiled 
lay-sister  comes  out  with  her  pitcher,  and 
into  it  is  delivered,  in  quantity  required, 
and  direct  from  the  source,  that  which  a 
bountiful  Providence  designed  for  the 
nourishment  of  the  defrauded  calves. 
Their  resentment  must  be  great,  as  they 
hear  the  milky  stream  buzzing  into  the 
123 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

convent  pitcher.  It  seems  an  unnecessary 
cruelty  to  bring  them.  They  have  Httle 
straw  muzzles  over  their  mouths,  and  they 
are  tied  with  ropes,  each  to  the  tail  of  its 
mother.  The  cows  have  ropes  around 
their  necks,  and  are  led  by  the  men. 
When  the  deliberate  business  is  over,  a 
few  centimes  are  put  into  the  hand  of  one 
of  the  men,  the  sister  eyes  critically  the 
fluid  in  the  pitcher,  the  convent  door 
closes,  and  the  procession  winds  its  slow 
length  down  between  the  trees  and  out 
at  the  convent  gate  to  serve  milk  to  the 
next  patron  on  the  route.  The  men  look 
as  if  they  were  not  much  more  specula- 
tive than  the  cows  ;  the  cows  have  a 
treadmill,  middle-aged,  rather  careworn, 
though  patient  look. 

The  calves  had  to  me  a  sullen  and 
resentful  expression.  One  was  an  infant 
bull  with  a  strong  head  and  a  marked 
personality  of  his  own,  and  you  wondered 
if  he  were  not  destined  some  day  to  draw 
the  plaudits  of  an  Andalusian  crowd  in 
124 


A   SPANISH    MILK-ROUTE 

the  bull-ring  that  you  could  see  from  the 
hill  in  the  convent  garden.  The  other 
was  only  a  little  "  common  garden  "  red 
cow,  who  would  probably  amount  to  no- 
thing more  distinguished  than  the  prima- 
donna  of  a  strolling  company  like  the 
present ;  but  they  both  had  the  look  of 
youthful  resistance  to  monotony  and  bond- 
age, not  to  say  short  commons. 

There  is  something  to  commend  in  the 
Spanish  method.  The  consumer  gets  pure 
milk,  and  the  tinkle  of  a  cow-bell  is  less 
offensive  than  a  war-whoop  at  the  base- 
ment door  before  dawn,  and  the  rattle 
of  milk- carts  over  the  stony  streets  from 
four  to  eight  a.  m.  For  the  producer 
there  is  also  something  to  be  said.  If 
the  "  route  "  clears  a  peseta  a  day  (twenty 
cents)  it  is  probably  considered  a  pay- 
ing concern.  In  a  country  where  a  good 
laborer  can  only  earn  seven  reals  (thirty- 
five  cents)  a  day,  the  ground  would  be 
strewn  with  corpses  if  he  could  not  sup- 
port his  family  on  that  amount  of  money. 
125 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

The  ground  is  not  strewn  with  corpses, 
so  he  must  do  it.  It  is  perhaps  well  to 
be  satisfied  with  a  peseta  a  day  profit  in 
a  climate  where  a  diurnal  tomato,  a  bunch 
of  raisins,  and  a  lump  of  sour  bread  will 
support  life.  The  adulteration  of  milk, 
and  consequently  of  conscience,  is  pre- 
vented. Life  is  sweet,  but  it  is  also 
short.  What  does  it  matter  whether  a 
man  leaves  his  children  an  inheritance  to 
be  taxed,  and  perhaps  fought  over,  or 
only  an  air  to  breathe  and  a  faith  that 

"  The  saints  will  hear  if  men  will  call, 
For  the  blue  sky  bends  over  all." 

And  the  sky  that  bends  over  southern 
Spain  seems  always  blue,  and  there  is  a 
saint,  I  should  think,  for  every  hour  in 
every  day. 

126 


XIV 

BLOOD  POWER 

As  I  was  waiting  one  day  in  a  cab 
before  a  friend's  house,  I  noticed  a  man 
come  out  of  a  hallway  near,  struggling 
with  the  weight  of  a  heavy  trunk  which 
two  women  were  helping  him  to  drag  out 
to  the  doorstep.  It  was  an  enormous 
trunk,  and  must  have  been  very  full,  for 
even  our  driver,  who  was  not  above  beat- 
ing his  horse  and  swearing  at  people  who 
got  in  his  way,  shook  his  head  and  groaned 
as  he  looked  at  it,  and  got  off  his  box  and 
bore  a  hand  in  lifting  it  up  on  the  man's 
shoulders.  The  man  first  put  a  strap 
around  his  forehead,  to  which  was  at- 
tached, at  the  two  ends,  a  sort  of  hassock 
or  cushion  which  rested  on  his  neck. 
The  trunk,  with  great  effort  of  the  two 
127 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

maids  and  the  cabman,  and  the  porter 
himself,  was  raised  into  position,  while  he 
bent  his  body  almost  double.  His  face, 
as  I  caught  sight  of  it  under  the  trunk, 
was  very  red.  He  started  off  in  a  stag- 
gering way,  but  after  a  little  his  pace 
steadied,  and  he  went  along  quickly  as 
far  as  I  could  see  him.  I  was  impressed 
by  the  sight,  but  there  are  so  many  im- 
pressive sights  in  Spanish  streets  that 
I  acknowledge  I  forgot  about  him  after 
he  turned  the  corner.  We  drove  to 
the  Bishop's  Palace,  and  while  we  were 
waiting  at  the  door  to  know  if  his  Grace 
would  receive  us,  the  poor  man  with  the 
trunk  on  his  bowed  back  passed  us  again. 
It  was  certainly  fifteen  minutes  since  we 
had  seen  him  start  with  his  load ;  it  had 
taken  us  ten  to  drive  the  distance,  and  it 
would  be  at  a  brisk  pace  that  it  could  be 
accomplished  on  foot  in  fifteen,  but  it  was 
rather  a  downhill  road.  He  did  not  go 
fast  now,  and  there  was  a  suspicion  of 
unsteadiness  in  his  gait.  His  face  had 
128 


BLOOD   POWER 

turned  from  red  to  purple.  He  disap- 
peared down  a  narrow  street,  and  I  never 
saw  him  again. 

After  that   day   I  watched  the   poor 
beasts  of   burden   with   interest.     They 
have  stands  like  the  cabmen,  where  you 
can  always  find  one.     They  sit  on  their 
little  stuffed  cushions  when  out  of  work, 
and  do  not  look  discontented.   I  find  they 
are  employed  in  moving  furniture.     One 
Sunday  a  family  was  in  the  act  of  dhnd- 
nagement  as  I  came  from  church ;  they 
were  leaving  a  house  in  the  Caleta  for 
one  in  town,  and  we  met  their  various 
articles  of  furniture  walking  along  the 
Cortina  del  Muelle  in  a  ^/^^^/ manner ; 
here  a  washstand,  there  a  dressing-table, 
and  there  again  a  pile  of  four  or  five  well- 
packed  drawers  covered  with  napkins,  and 
carefully  balanced. 

But  the  thing  I  liked  least  was  a  huge 
wardrobe  which  "with  lagging  step  and 
slow,    brought  up  the  rear. 

There  are  never  by  any  chance  two 
129 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

men  tackling  the  same  load,  so  I  take  it 
these  express  companies  are  limited,  and 
there  are  no  partnerships.  It  may  be  a 
profitable  calling,  as  profits  go  in  Spain. 
The  license  cannot  cost  much,  neither 
can  the  hassock,  ct  voila !  your  plant. 
For  everybody  has  to  have  clothes,  and 
they  cannot  be  reckoned  as  outlay ;  neither 
can  a  shelter  for  your  head  at  night.  All 
outside  the  hassock  and  the  license  is 
clear  profit.  There  is  probably  a  good 
deal  of  competition,  for  there  are  plenty 
of  horses  such  as  they  are,  and  donkeys 
and  mules  abound.  What  we  call  "  horse 
power,"  the  Spanish  call  "blood  power." 
I  suppose  they  do  not  reckon  their  bro- 
thers' blood  in  with  the  other  sorts, — 
horse  and  mule  and  donkey. 
130 


XV 

AN    ANDALUSIAN  COOK 

Pilar  was  a  young  peasant  woman.  I 
do  not  know  from  what  village  she  came, 
somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mal- 
aga. She  was  paid  three  dollars  a  month, 
and  she  "found"  herself.  A  chef  m 
that  happy  land  gets  five  dollars  a  month, 
but  times  were  bad,  and  my  friends  had 
had  for  three  years  to  content  themselves 
with  a  woman  cook.  She  cooked  well, 
though,  and  cheerfully,  and  she  prepared 
more  meals  in  the  twenty-four  hours  than 
any  other  cook  I  ever  heard  of.  The 
children  of  the  household  were  of  various 
ages  and  sexes,  and  went  to  various 
schools,  and  needed  their  meals  at  sepa- 
rate hours.  To  be  sure,  the  master  of 
the  house  was  keeping  a  strict  Lent  that 
131 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

year,  and  only  ate  one  meal  a  day,  but 
that  had  to  be  in  the  middle  of  it,  conse- 
quently it  had  to  be  cooked  and  served 
alone.  Madame  was  delicate,  and  not 
only  could  not  fast,  but  had  to  have  very 
good  and  very  nourishing  food,  and  to 
have  it  very  often  during  the  day.  There 
was  room  for  no  Spanish  procrastination, 
I  am  sure,  in  Pilar's  kitchen,  but  there 
must  have  been  plenty  of  bonne  volont^. 

She  seemed  to  have  identified  herself 
thoroughly  with  the  family,  and  to  work 
with  a  zealous  love  for  them  all.  There 
was,  however,  one  of  the  many  children 
for  whom  she  had  a  special  affection,  a 
very  delicate  little  maiden  of  two  and  a 
half.  During  the  autumn  this  child  had 
been  desperately  ill.  The  doctors  gave  no 
hope.  Pilar  in  anguish  prayed  for  her 
recovery,  and  promised  the  Bestower  of 
life  that  if  He  would  spare  little  Anita, 
she  would,  before  the  end  of  Holy  Week, 
carry  to  the  shrine  on  the  top  of  the 
"Calvary"  outside  the  town,  one  pound 
132 


AN   ANDALUSIAN   COOK 

of  olive  oil  to  be  burned  in  His  honor. 
She  promised  a  great  many  prayers  be- 
side, which  she  managed  to  get  said,  in 
the  intervals  of  her  frying  and  stewing 
and  boiling. 

Well,  the  little  girl,  contrary  to  the 
doctors,  began  to  mend,  and  finally  was 
entirely  restored  to  health.  Pilar  was 
most  grateful,  and  said  many  Aves  in 
thanksgiving.  The  winter  was  a  busy 
one,  and  then  Lent  came  and  seemed  no 
less  busy  in  that  big  household.  Pilar 
did  not  forget  the  pound  of  oil,  but  there 
never  seemed  a  moment  when  she  could 
ask  a  half  day  to  go  and  carry  it  to  the 
shrine.  Holy  Week  came,  Monday, 
Tuesday,  Wednesday,  Thursday,  —  what 
should  she  do  !  She  could  scarcely  get 
away  from  her  work  even  to  go  out  to  her 
parish  church  on  Holy  Thursday,  to  say 
a  little  prayer  before  the  Repository 
where,  throned  in  flowers  and  lighted 
with  myriad  candles,  the  Blessed  Sacra- 
ment is  kept  till  the  morning  of  Good 
133 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

Friday.  As  to  going  to  seven  churches 
and  saying  her  prayers  before  each  Repos- 
itory as  other  people  did,  that,  alas !  was 
not  "for  the  likes  of  her."  She  had  a 
dumb  deep-down  feeling,  however,  that 
the  good  God  knew,  and  that  it  would  be 
all  right.  On  her  way  back  from  her 
hurried  prayer  at  the  church,  a  procession 
passed  which  she  watched  for  a  moment. 
But  this  only  proved  painful,  for  it  had 
begun  to  rain,  and  her  pious  southern 
soul  was  aflame  with  wrath  that  the 
image  of  the  Blessed  Redeemer  should  be 
exposed  to  the  storm. 

"They  don't  care  about  wetting  his 
dear  curls,"  she  cried,  "as  long  as  they 
can  have  a  good  procession." 

She  shook  her  fist  at  the  crowd,  and 
came  away  in  tears.  Her  mistress,  a 
devout  Catholic,  tried  to  console  her  by 
reminding  her  that,  after  all,  it  was  only 
an  image  and  not  the  dear  Lord  she 
loved.  Oh,  she  knew  tJiat ;  but  it  was 
cruel,  but  it  was  shameful !  She  felt  as  a 
134 


AN   ANDALUSIAN   COOK 

mother  would  feel  if  the  dress  of  her  dead 
baby,  or  its  little  half-worn  shoe  were 
spoiled  by  the  caprice  or  cold-heartedness 
of  some  one  who  had  no  feeling  for  it. 
Altogether  Holy  Thursday  was  not  very 
consoling  to  Pilar,  and  the  pound  of  oil 
grew  heavier  every  hour. 

The  next  day.  Good  Friday,  she  had 
only  time  to  go  to  church  through  the 
silent  streets,  where  no  wheels  were 
heard,  and  say  her  prayers  and  look  at 
the  black,  black  altars  and  the  veiled 
statues.  That  night,  after  her  work  was 
done,  and  the  last  baby  had  been  served 
with  its  last  porridge,  she  put  her  kitchen 
in  hurried  order,  and  stole  out  silently. 
She  had  bought  the  pound  of  oil  at  a 
little  shop  in  the  next  street  and,  hiding 
it  under  her  shawl,  turned  her  steps 
towards  Barcenillas. 

The  night  was  black  and  tempestuous. 

A  hot  dry   wind   blew;    occasionally  a 

gust  brought  a  few  drops  of  rain,  but 

more  often  it  was  only  a  roaring  gale 

135 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

which  made  the  street-lamps  blink,  and 
whirled  the  dust  around  her.  It  was  a 
long  way  to  the  suburb ;  it  was  late ; 
there  were  few  abroad,  But  no  matter, 
the  good  Lord  knew  why  she  was  out, 
and  He  would  take  care  of  her. 

There  are  no  trams  running  in  the 
days  of  Holy  Week.  From  Holy  Thurs- 
day till  after  the  cathedral  bells  ring  for 
first  vespers  on  Holy  Saturday,  no  horse 
is  taken  out  of  its  stall,  no  wheels  move 
in  the  streets  of  Malaga.  It  was  nearly 
midnight  when  she  got  to  Barcenillas. 
She  crossed  the  silent  plaza,  passed 
through  the  gate,  and  began  the  ascent 
of  the  steep  hill.  There  is  a  great  broad 
road  that  winds  up  it,  and  at  every  "  sta- 
tion "  there  is  a  lamp  burning.  She  knelt 
at  each  as  she  reached  it.  But  the  place 
was  very  lonely ;  the  eucalyptus  trees 
shook  and  whispered  to  each  other,  and 
the  lamps  were  dim  and  flickered  in  the 
rough  wind.  The  night  before  there  had 
been  processions  all  through  the  night, 
136 


AN   ANDALUSIAN   COOK 

crowds  upon  crowds  going  up  the  hill ; 
she  would  not  have  been  lonely  then. 
But  she  could  not  get  away,  because  of 
little  Josef's  being  ill  and  needing  the 
water  heated  for  his  bath  every  hour. 
Yes,  it  would  have  been  nicer  last  night, 
with  all  the  priests,  and  all  the  chanting, 
and  all  the  flaming  torches.  But  the 
good  God  knew  all  about  it,  —  why  she 
did  not  come  then,  when  she  wanted  to,  — 
and  why  she  came  now,  when  she  was 
afraid,  and  almost  did  not  want  to.  Not 
that  exactly ;  she  did  want  to,  —  only  — 
oh,  but  then  He  knew;  she  would  not 
worry,  but  she  said  her  prayers  with 
chattering  teeth,  and  many  furtive  looks 
behind  her. 

At  last  she  reached  the  summit,  where 
in  a  little  chapel  burned  the  light  that 
could  be  seen  for  miles  around  Malaga. 
There  a  solitary  brother  knelt,  saying  his 
beads  and  keeping  watch.  She  said  her 
last  prayers  at  the  altar,  and  left  the 
votive  oil  with  the  friar,  who  commended 
137 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

her  piety  and  was  very  kind.  As  she  came 
out,  the  clouds  broke  and  the  Paschal 
moon  shone  through  them,  and  the  broad 
road  led  down  with  smooth  ease  towards 
the  sleeping,  silent  city.  Her  steps  made 
just  as  lonely  echoes  on  the  stones  of  the 
deserted  streets,  but  she  felt  herself 
favored  of  heaven,  as  no  doubt  she  was, 
and  all  her  fears  were  gone. 

It  was  after  three  o'clock  when  she  let 
herself  in  at  the  kitchen  door ;  and  it  was 
several  weeks  before  her  mistress  learned, 
by  accident,  of  the  dolorous  little  pilgrim- 
age. 

138 


XVI 

Malaga's  bishop 

The  cathedral  stands  in  a  cluttered 
sort  of  square.  The  old  mosque  that 
once  occupied  the  spot  was  turned  into 
a  Gothic  church.  Nothing  of  that  re- 
mains but  the  portal  of  the  Sagrario, 
very  beautiful  by  contrast  with  the  rest 
of  the  building.  The  plans  were  drawn 
(probably  by  Diego  de  Siloe)  in  1528,  but 
there  have  been  a  great  many  lions  in  the 
path  of  its  completion,  including  that  most 
august  of  destroyers,  an  earthquake.  In 
fact,  it  is  still  unfinished,  and  its  altered 
plans  have  made  it  mongrel  and  unsatis- 
factory as  a  whole.  It  is  huge,  but  big- 
ness alone  is  not  beauty.  However,  it  is 
solemn  and  vast,  and  it  is  beloved  of  the 
people.  All  day  they  come  straggling  in 
139 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

to  say  their  prayers.  Sometimes  you  will 
meet  a  group  of  brown  and  ragged  fisher- 
men, redolent  of  their  calling,  who  have 
come  in  from  the  near-by  beach  to  give 
thanks  for  a  good  haul  of  fish,  or  to  ask 
preservation  during  the  darkness  of  the 
approaching  night  at  sea.  You  see 
them  kneeling,  one  at  this  altar,  another 
at  that,  with  serious  and  devout  mien. 

Or  there  comes  in  alone  at  one  of  the 
great  doors  a  quiet  little  child  of  five  or 
six,  with  a  straight  cotton  skirt  down  to 
her  shoes,  and  a  round  old-womanish  waist, 
a  handkerchief  tied  over  her  head,  her 
beads  dangling  from  her  tiny  hands.  She 
stands  on  tiptoe  to  dip  her  finger  in  the 
big  b^niticvy  crosses  herself,  and  genu- 
flects, and  then  with  sedate  intelligence 
and  a  sweet  piety  makes  her  way  across 
the  vast  marble  spaces  to  the  altars  that 
she  loves  best,  and  says  a  prayer  now  at 
this  one,  now  at  that. 

Sometimes  a  couple  of  boys  rush  in 
pell-mell  from  their  play.  As  they  enter, 
140 


MALAGA'S    BISHOP 

their  faces  grow  serious,  their  bearing  de- 
corous. They  do  not  say  many  prayers, 
boys  do  not  as  a  rule,  but  they  are  proba- 
bly none  the  worse  for  the  breathing- 
space,  and  the  bent  knee,  and  the  little 
decorum.  As  they  go  out  at  another  door 
across  the  great  stretch  of  worn  marble 
pavement,  there  is  not  any  relaxing  of 
the  tension  till  the  heavy  curtain  falls 
behind  them ;  and  then,  down  the  huge 
flight  of  steps  into  the  plaza,  you  hear  a 
clattering  of  feet  and  a  wild  whoop,  as 
they  return  to  the  world  after  their  brief 
trajet  across  the  consecrated  precincts. 
It  is  not  the  fear  of  punishment ;  nobody 
would  **do  anything"  to  them  if  they 
rioted  in  the  sacred  place.  Spanish  te^me 
is  very  lax  in  things  ecclesiastic,  as  it  is 
in  most  matters,  —  a  light  robe  hanging 
loosely  as  befits  the  climate.  But  the 
love  of  God  even  more  than  the  fear  of 
Him  is  deeply  rooted  in  the  being  of 
these  children  of  the  south. 

It  is  pretty  to  see  them  pressing  up 
141 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

to  the  side  altars  where  low  mass  is  be- 
ing said ;  no  music,  no  incense,  nothing 
to  attract  them  specially.  They  sit  and 
kneel  on  the  very  steps  ;  one  would  think 
the  priest  would  have  to  brush  them 
away.  It  is  not  "  mummery  "  to  them 
either.  You  will  see  them  slip  down  on 
their  knees  before  the  bell  rings  at  the 
"  Sanctus,"  showing  they  have  been  fol- 
lowing every  word  of  the  mass.  It  is 
touching  to  see  them  bow  their  little 
dark  heads  and  cross  themselves,  when 
at  the  end  of  mass  the  priest  gives  the 
blessing.  They  kneel  on  while  he  says 
the  brief  "prayers  after  mass,"  and  re- 
spond in  childish  treble  to  his 

"  Pray  for  us,  O  holy  Mother  of  God,"— 
"  That  we  may  become  worthy  of  the 
promises  of  Christ." 

You  almost  feel  sure  that  they  are 
worthy  of  the  promises  of  Christ,  and  in 
a  fair  way  to  enter  into  the  kingdom 
shut  against  all  who  do  not  become  as 
little  children. 

142 


MALAGA'S   BISHOP 

And  there  are  old  men  and  women, 
emaciated,  ragged,  wan,  sitting  on  pave- 
ment or  step,  or  dozing  by  the  gate  of 
the  choir.  The  Andalusian  poor  have 
no  firesides ;  but  what  they  lack  in  fire- 
sides they  make  up  in  altars ;  the  altar 
is  their  fireside. 

Across  the  square  is  the  bishop's  pal- 
ace. It  is  neither  impressive  nor  inter- 
esting except  as  being  the  home  of  a 
very  saintly  man.  All  the  people  of 
Malaga,  foes  to  the  church  as  well  as  its 
friends,  spoke  in  praise  of  this  good  man. 
He  was  a  marques,  the  head  of  his  family 
and  the  inheritor  of  a  large  fortune.  All 
this  he  laid  down ;  another  man  took  his 
title  and  place,  and  entered  into  the  en- 
joyment of  his  houses  and  lands  when 
he  became  an  humble,  nameless  priest. 
Out  of  that  position  of  obscurity,  his 
sanctity  and  his  marked  ability  after 
some  years  raised  him  to  the  hierarchy. 
He  preached  the  Advent  and  the  Lent 
in  the  cathedral  that  year  we  were  in 
143 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

Malaga.  The  Lenten  subject  was  **The 
Catholic  in  the  Modern  World,"  or  some- 
thing like  that.  The  up-to-date-ness  of 
the  incisive,  deep  discourse  was  very 
striking,  as  well  as  the  hushed  silence 
of  the  crowded  vast  cathedral.  The  ser- 
mon was  an  hour  long ;  no  one  seemed 
to  wish  it  shorter. 

We  heard  a  good  deal,  too,  about  his 
charities.  That  winter  was  a  hard  one 
in  Malaga ;  the  poverty  was  direr  than 
ever  before.  The  bishop  gave  up  his 
carriage  and  gave  the  money  to  the  poor, 
and  went  about  on  his  many  ways  in  the 
rattling  old  cabs  of  the  city.  I  have 
more  than  once  seen  him  in  the  selfsame 
broken-springed,  battered  old  hack  which 
we  ordinarily  used,  with  a  driver  much 
too  big  for  it,  who  had  a  red  face  and 
a  habit  of  swirling  his  whip  about  un- 
necessarily. I  hope  he  curbed  this  in- 
clination when  he  had  his  Grace  for  a 
fare. 

One  saw  that  economy  ruled  at  the 
144 


MALAGA'S   BISHOP 

palace  ;  everything  that  could  be  spared, 
people  said,  was  given  to  the  poor.  It 
was  bare,  but  clean,  —  so  clean,  the  floors 
and  windows  seemed  always  being  washed. 
In  the  court  by  which  you  entered  there 
were  several  palms  in  green  tubs, — plain 
tubs,  no  illusion.  It  was  evident  the 
good  bishop  did  not  give  much  thought 
to  the  decoration  of  his  abode.  There 
was  one  room,  however,  into  which  we 
were  taken  once,  that  looked  as  if  it  had 
had  some  thought  and  care  bestowed 
upon  it.  It  had  a  warm,  furnished  look, 
and  the  high  windows  opened  upon  a 
garden  where  flowers  ran  riot,  as  they  do 
in  Spain.  The  bishop's  mother,  old  and 
feeble,  lived  with  him,  and  his  care  for 
and  devotion  to  her  were  as  edifying  as 
his  charities  or  his  austerities  or  any 
other  of  his  virtues.  I  should  judge 
that  the  state  which  his  position  called 
for  was  rather  irksome  to  him,  but  as  a 
true  Spaniard  he  felt  he  ought  to  be 
punctilious  in  matters  of  etiquette.  He 
145 


A    CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

was  in  spiritual  affairs,  however,  at  every- 
body's beck  and  call,  just  as  if  he  were 
not  a  high  dignitary.  There  was,  in 
Malaga,  no  priest  who  could  hear  confes- 
sions in  English,  and  only  two  who  could 
hear  them  in  French,  and  one  of  these 
two  was  the  bishop.  So  all  the  strag- 
gling foreigners  who  came  to  Malaga 
climbed  up  the  great  bare  palace  stairs 
and  rang  his  bell  and  asked  to  be  shriven, 
just  as  if  he  had  not  been  his  Grace.  He 
always  had  a  patient,  gentle  expression, 
as  if  he  said,  ''  Oh,  don't  mind,  it 's  what 
I  'm  here  for."  Orphanages,  sisterhoods, 
all  the  myriad  charities  of  the  suffering 
city,  were  under  his  care,  and  called  him 
father,  and  were  pretty  exacting  children 
sometimes,  I  have  heard. 

Something  connected  with  one  of  his 
official  duties  as  bishop  interested  me, 
as  showing  his  self-forgetfulness  and 
piety.  Once,  some  revolution  accom- 
panied by  acts  of  a  more  than  usually 
blasphemous  and  sacrilegious  character 
146 


MALAGA'S   BISHOP 

had  made  it  necessary  that  all  the  altar- 
stones  in  the  city  should  be  reconsecrated. 
The  ceremony  of  consecration — which 
is  never  intended  to  be  renewed,  but  is 
ordinarily  done  once  and  forever  —  is 
of  great  length  and  of  stringently  exact 
detail.  The  laity  do  not  assist  at  it. 
The  bishop  who  consecrates  must  fast 
the  day  before,  i.  e.,  eat  but  one  meal, 
and  that  at  midday.  Of  course,  on  the 
day  of  consecration,  he  does  not  taste 
food  or  drink  till  the  ceremonies  are 
over.  On  this  day  the  consecration  of 
the  first  stone  began  in  the  very  early 
morning,  perhaps  not  long  after  dawn. 
At  six  in  the  evening,  the  last  one  was 
begun,  and  it  was  nearly  nine  o'clock 
when  the  bishop  got  home  and  first 
tasted  food.  He  seemed  quite  to  have 
forgotten  the  hour  till  he  saw  how  fagged 
and  worn  the  assisting  priests  looked. 
They  were  not  fasting,  but  the  long  and 
rigorous  service  alone  had  exhausted 
them.  He  was  contrite  and  self-re- 
147 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

proachful  that  he  had  not  more  consid- 
ered them.  Certainly  fifteen  or  sixteen 
hours  of  continuous  mental  effort  are 
rather  a  tax  anywhere,  but  in  limp  and 
soft  Andalusia  it  is  almost  an  incredible 
strain. 

This  was  the  only  Spanish  bishop  I 
knew,  but  I  have  rather  come  to  believe, 
since  I  have  read  an  Essay  of  Cardinal 
Wiseman's  on  Spain,  ^  that  he  was  only 
one  of  many,  and  a  fair  sample  of  the 
rest. 

1  "  Essay  on  Spain,"  vol.  v.  of  Works  of  Cardinal  Wise- 
man. (P.  O'Shea,  New  York,  1876.)  If  any  one  reading 
these  superficial  and  hurried  sketches  should,  by  this 
allusion,  be  led  to  look  up  the  volume  mentioned,  and 
read  it,  I  should  feel  that  my  little  book  had  an  excuse  for 
being,  which  otherwise  I  have  doubted. 
148 


XVII 

Malaga's  manners 

In  the  matter  of  manners,  we  found 
there  were  many  points  of  difference 
from  ours.  The  women  do  not  shriek 
and  shrill  as  ours  do,  but  they  are  not  as 
soft-voiced  as  the  English,  who  breathe 
perpetual  fog ;  nor  as  piercingly  swift 
in  the  flight  of  their  words  as  the  French. 
Their  language,  however,  is  softer  than 
their  voices ;  they  make  a  good  deal  of 
noise  when  they  are  massed. 

The  names  of  the  women  testify  the 
devotion  of  the  land  to  the  Mater  Dei, 
—  la  tierra  de  Maria  Santisima.  All 
possible  turns  and  twists  are  given  to  it, 
but  it  must  be  Maria,  Maria,  somehow 
Maria,  most  often  with  the  Maria  sunk 
in  the  particular  mystery.  Maria  de  las 
149 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

Angustias  (our  Lady  of  Anguish),  Marfa 
de  la  Concepcion,  Marfa  Inmaculata, 
Maria  de  Dolores,  Maria  del  Pilar,  Maria 
del  Piedad,  one  meets  familiarly  as  An- 
gustia.  Concha,  Conchita,  Inmaculata, 
Dolores,  Pilar,  Piedad,  and  so  on.  In 
fact,  in  any  class  or  family  it  is  rather 
rare  to  meet  with  girls  whose  names  do 
not  suggest  the  devotion  of  the  land. 
St.  Joseph  naturally  shares  with  her  in 
the  affections  of  the  household  and  gives 
an  extra  variation  or  two.  Josefina  is 
but  one  remove  from  Maria,  and  most 
of  the  boys  have  Jose  if  not  Maria  in 
their  names.  It  is  very  pretty  and  wins 
rather  than  repels,  as  you  get  a  little 
into  the  heart  of  the  Spanish  household. 
All  the  Marias  and  all  the  Joses,  it  is 
true,  do  not  reflect  honor  on  their  patron 
saints,  but  neither  do  the  Washingtons 
of  our  native  land  always  turn  out  to  be 
patriots.  "  He  shoots  higher  who  aims 
at  the  moon  than  he  who  only  threatens 
a  tree,"  and  it  seems  better  to  have  a 
150 


MALAGA'S   MANNERS 

pious  thought  for  your  child,  and  to  set 
before  it  a  lofty  model  than  to  get  it 
a  name  out  of  a  novel,  and  to  set  it  no 
model  at  all. 

It  is  difficult  to  tighten  the  Spanish  up 
into  any  very  formal  social  life.  There 
is  always  a  tendency  to  soften  down  into 
amiability  and  ease.  They  have  strict 
rules  of  etiquette,  but  they  slur  them 
over  as  soon  as  they  get  to  know  you. 

There  is  one  point,  however,  to  which 
they  hold  tenaciously,  and  that  is  the 
length  and  depth  of  their  mourning. 
Little  children  as  young  as  three  and 
four  we  saw  were  put  in  black,  not  only 
for  parents  and  brothers  and  sisters,  but 
for  aunts  and  uncles.  Half  the  children 
in  Mdlaga  looked  as  if  they  had  been 
dipped  in  ink-bottles.  Their  bereaved 
elders  wore  the  blackest  black,  the  men 
as  well  as  the  women.  The  latter  wore 
long  black  veils  of  a  sort  of  soft  grena- 
dine, pinned  on  the  hair  instead  of  the 
ordinary  lace  mantilla.  There  is  really 
151 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

a  sentiment  in  the  gloom  and  droop  of 
this,  —  a  contrast  to  the  ornate  and  ugly 
French  dciiil,  crowned  with  be-feathered 
hats  carrying  long  crape  pennants  of  woe 
floating  in  the  breeze,  or,  failing  breeze, 
dragging  to  the  ground.  The  Malaga 
woman  wears  plain  and  sad  clothes,  and 
her  veil  falls  as  if  she  mourned.  In  fact 
she  does  mourn,  and  her  clothes  are  the 
true  expression  of  what  she  feels.  They 
are  as  a  nation  strong  in  their  affections 
and  constant.  Family  life  is  united  and 
satisfying ;  it  means  a  good  deal  to  them 
when  death  breaks  it.  The  French  dec- 
orate their  grieving  garb,  and  the  English 
scarcely  wear  theirs  at  all ;  the  one  race 
are  too  vivacious,  and  the  other  too 
healthy  to  mourn  their  dead  as  long  as 
pensive  and  pious  Spain. 

But  the  custom  falls  into  the  grotesque 
when  a  young  girl  comes  down  to  receive 
you,  three  years  after  her  father's  death, 
pulling  on  a  pair  of  long  black  gloves, 
and  when  a  recent  widower  leaves  at 
152 


MALAGA'S   MANNERS 

your  door  a  card  as  black  as  night.  I 
have  one  before  me  now ;  it  disdains 
borders  ;  the  face  of  the  card  is  all  black, 
the  name  and  the  address  are  in  thin 
white  text.     It  is  very  startling. 

Visiting  is  also  sharply  restricted  after 
a  death.  The  family,  to  the  remotest 
branches,  are  expected  to  seclude  them- 
selves absolutely  for  a  month  ;  after  that, 
there  are  innumerable  grades  of  detach- 
ment from  the  world,  or  gradual  resump- 
tion of  its  pleasures,  according  to  the 
degree  of  kinship. 

If  their  manner  of  mourning  is  dis- 
tinctive, their  festal  mode  strikes  one  as 
not  less  so.  If  you  get  an  informal  note 
of  invitation  that  winds  up  like  this : 

De  V.  At°  S.  S. 
Q.  B.  S.  M. 

and  then,  beneath,  your  friend's  (male 
friend's)  name,  it  means  that  he  is  your 
devoted  servant  who  kisses  your  hand, 
after  having  invited  you  to  "this  your 
house,"  at  such  an  hour  on  such  a  day. 
153 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

If  you  accepted  his  invitation  and  visited 
him  for  the  first  time,  he  would  ceremo- 
niously welcome  you  to  his  house,  which 
he  would  thenceforth  allude  to  as  your 
house,  and  would  invariably  style  him- 
self your  servant.  Then  of  course  he 
offers  you  anything  among  his  posses- 
sions that  you  may  admire.  But  no  less 
"of  course"  you  must  not  take  it.  He 
would  inwardly  be  sadly  disturbed  if  you 
did,  but  outwardly  he  would  bear  the 
bereavement  with  grave  Spanish  dignity. 

If  a  young  girl  met  at  an  evening 
entertainment  a  young  man  whom  she 
liked,  she  would  flutter  across  the  room 
to  her  father  and  whisper,  "  Go  and  offer 
him  the  house,  papa,  quick,  quick,  before 
he  goes  away."  Of  course  she  cannot 
offer  it  herself  ;  she  would  die  rather, 
which  is  quite  to  her  credit. 

There  are  many  little  odds  and  ends 

of  habits  of  speech  which  are  graceful. 

You  apologize  to  the  beggar  to  whom 

you  refuse  an  alms,  "Forgive   me  for 

154 


MALAGA'S   MANNERS 

God's  sake,  my  brother."  If  you  ask 
a  little  boy  his  name,  he  will  answer, 
"Juan,"  or  Valentin,  or  whatever  it  may 
be,  "to  serve  God  and  you."  When 
you  meet  a  man  whom  you  know  in  the 
street,  he  takes  off  his  hat  and  says,  "  At 
your  feet,  madame." 

Their  hospitality  is  frank  and  gener- 
ous ;  at  the  same  time,  if  it  is  any  gene 
to  them,  they  will  not,  for  mere  good 
manners,  do  much  for  you.  If  they  have 
taken  a  fancy  to  you,  or  are  sorry  for 
you,  they  cannot  do  too  much.  I  saw 
the  most  unbounded  hospitality  shown 
to  a  young  stranger  whose  mother  had 
died  suddenly  while  spending  a  month 
at  one  of  the  hotels.  If  she  had  been  a 
sister,  a  child,  she  could  not  have  been 
more  tenderly  cared  for ;  all  homes  were 
open  to  her  to  choose  from.  That  she 
was  not  of  their  creed  was  no  bar  to 
their  generous  sympathy. 

Five  o'clock  tea  has  penetrated  even 
to  Malaga ;  but  it  still  is  an  exotic.  Its 
155 


A   CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

distinctive  feature  is  the  excess  of  deli- 
cious sweets,  of  which  the  men  eat  prod- 
igally. It  would  seem  that  young  people 
could  not  meet  together  even  at  this 
hour  without  drifting  away  into  a  waltz, 
if  there  were  any  one  to  play  for  them. 
Or  if  there  were  no  one  to  play,  no  piano, 
guitar,  or  zither,  a  thing  inconceivable 
in  a  Spanish  house,  some  child  would  be 
on  hand  to  clap  her  castanets  and  dance 
the  Malaquenas  with  grace  and  spirit. 
Once  on  the  train  going  to  Seville  we 
were  detained  for  a  half  hour,  and  some 
Malaga  people  whom  we  happened  to 
know  put  their  little  girl  of  five  on  the 
seat  of  the  compartment  and  made  her 
dance  the  Cachucha  to  amuse  us.  The 
love  of  dancing  seems  to  be  more  than 
a  tradition  with  them,  almost  an  inborn 
passion. 

I  had  expected  to  see  among  the  char- 
acteristic things  of  the  place  the  beauti- 
ful big  pale  green  grapes  which  go  here 
by  the  name  of  *'  Malaga  grapes,"  but  I 
156 


MALAGA'S    MANNERS 

found  they  did  not  grow  in  Malaga  at 
all.  From  the  time  I  heard  that,  I  lost 
my  interest  in  its  commerce,  and  though 
I  was  taken  through  acres  of  warehouses 
and  furlongs  of  factories,  they  did  not  in- 
terest me  at  all.  I  came  to  see  churches 
and  convents  and  the  strange  life  of  the 
streets  and  the  odd  customs  of  society. 
"When  I  goes  a-troutin',  I  goes  a-trout- 
inV  and  so  I  boldly  flung  back  "the 
salmon"  of  Spanish  commerce  into  the 
stream.  I  could  see  factories  and  ware- 
houses bigger  and  better  at  home. 
157 


XVIII 


MATINAL 


Some  early  morning  drives  from  the 
convent  to  the  distant  EngHsh  church 
in  the  Caleta  gave  me  ghmpses  that 
interested  me,  of  the  Ufe  of  the  lower 
classes  in  the  city.  The  people  looked 
tired  and  sleepy,  and  as  if  it  were  an 
effort  to  get  the  wheels  of  a  new  day  in 
motion.  They  sat  about  on  doorsteps 
in  very  scant  clothing  and  yawned.  The 
housewives  carried  little  pans  of  food  to 
the  venders  of  artificial  heat  on  the 
corners  of  the  streets,  who  for  an  infini- 
tesimal coin  cooked  it  for  them  on  long- 
legged  stoves  which  they  wheeled  about 
from  square  to  square.  In  the  better 
quarters  cows  were  being  led  from  door 
to  door  and  milked  to  suit  customers. 
158 


MATINAL 

Sometimes  I  passed   through  an  old 
market-place,  — that  of  San  Pedro  de  Al- 
cantara.    A  church  stands  in  the  square 
opposite  the  shabby,  ancient  market ;  on 
the  steps  of  the  church  those  peasants 
too  poor  to  hire  a  stall  in  the  market 
spread  their  wares  for  sale.     Not  only 
on   the   steps,  but  on  the  flags  of  the 
street  were  women  sitting  by  the  pathetic 
httle  store  of  things  they  had  brought  in 
from  the  country  to  sell,  —  some  eggs, 
a  speechless,  melancholy  hen,  a  pair  of 
squawking,  protesting  ducks,  a  little  heap 
of   oranges,   a   basket   of   grapes,   some 
bunches  of  onions  and  carrots.     There 
were  throngs  of  people  passing  in  and 
out  and  making  their  purchases,  all  with 
a  great  deal  of  vociferation.     One  morn- 
ing, I  saw  on  the  steps  of  the  church 
a  plaintive-looking  old  woman  hovering 
over   her   stock   in   trade.      She   looked 
hungry,    anxious,    pleading.      It   was   so 
early  I  was  sure  her  stock  had  not  been 
depleted  by  sales  :  the  stock  was— three 
159 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

tomatoes.  Poor  old  being, — three  toma- 
toes !  I  wondered  how  many  miles  she 
had  walked  to  bring  them  in. 

It  was  rather  too  early  in  the  day  for 
beggars ;  at  no  time,  however,  are  there 
very  many  in  Malaga  compared  with  towns 
more  frequented  by  tourists.  But  there 
was  one  bright-eyed  little  boy  who  was 
always  up  betimes.  He  probably  had 
some  remote  connection  with  Seville  or 
Granada,  and  had  heard  what  was  to  be 
got  from  foreigners.  I  had,  though,  only 
to  make  a  horizontal  sweep  with  my  hand 
and  say,  "  Forgive  me,  my  brother,"  and 
he  would  fall  back  with  a  merry  little 
pout  and  a  coaxing  ^'  Manana  ?  "  And 
*' to-morrow"  he  would  run  after  me, 
pleading  again. 

It  was  rather  an  odd  experience,  when 
I  arrived  at  the  English  church  for  this 
early  service  on  Sundays  and  high  days, 
to  be  in  my  own  person.  The  Congrega- 
tion, but  for  the  whole  winter  that  hap- 
pened to  me.  There  are  said  to  be  over 
i6o 


MATINAL 

three  hundred  English  in  Malaga,  and 
this  chapel  is  the  only  Protestant  place 
of  worship  in  the  city,  I  was  led  to  con- 
clude from  this  that  Protestantism  is  not 
making  great  strides  in  Malaga,  though 
the  "  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts"  has  rarely 
sent  a  better  and  more  conscientious 
chaplain  anywhere  than  there.  At  eleven 
o'clock  there  was  a  second  service,  to 
which  thirty  or  forty  people  sometimes 
came. 

I  remember  another  early  morning 
church  experience.  A  young  American 
girl,  a  Catholic,  who  did  not  understand 
Spanish,  wanted  to  make  her  confession 
before  going  away  on  a  journey.  I  am 
sure  there  was  not  much  on  her  soul, 
she  was  so  pure  and  sweet,  —  only  a  lit- 
tle dust  to  be  brushed  away ;  but  she 
wanted  to  go,  et  que  votdez-votis  ?  The 
bishop  was  absent,  and  there  was  only 
one  other  priest  in  Malaga  who  knew 
French.  So  to  him  a  young  Spanish 
i6i 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

friend  offered  to  lead  her.  It  was  a  long 
way,  and  when  they  got  to  the  church 
he  was  not  at  the  altar,  though  it  was  his 
ordinary  hour  for  saying  mass.  They 
looked  at  all  the  side  altars  ;  he  was  not 
at  any  of  them.  It  was  an  inconceivable 
situation  !  The  church  was  full,  though 
it  was  not  a  fete  day :  a  "blue  Monday  " 
if  I  remember  right.  They  found  a  chair, 
and  then  the  Spanish  girl,  with  national 
vehemence,  hurried  to  a  lay-brother  and 
told  him  it  was  insupportable,  the  father 
must  come.  It  was  impossible,  the  bro- 
ther said,  he  was  in  bed,  he  was  threat- 
ened with  pneumonia,  he  could  not  even 
say  his  mass  that  day. 

"No  matter,"  she  insisted  with  the 
cruelty  of  youth,  "go  and  tell  him  the 
circumstances." 

The  morning  was  cold  for  Malaga,  the 
great  stone  church  was  damp  and  chilly, 
and  the  priest  was  very  delicate.  He 
had  probably  been  sent  to  the  monastery 
in  Malaga  to  preserve  his  very  valuable 
162 


MATINAL 

life,  for  he  was  one  of  the  best  preachers 
in  his  order,  and  a  most  saintly  man. 

The  young  American,  meanwhile,  was 
engrossed  in  her  prayers  and  oblivious 
of  what  was  going  on.  The  monastery 
was  on  the  other  side  of  the  street ;  pre- 
sently the  lay  brother  came  back  from 
it  and  said  mournfully,  "He  will  come," 
and  the  young  Spaniard  made  her  way 
through  the  worshipers  and  whispered 
to  her  kneeling  friend  with  subdued  tri- 
umph, "He  will  come." 

And  after  quarter  of  an  hour,  he  came. 
He  was  a  tall,  thin  man,  hollow-chested 
and  stooping,  with  a  very  pale  face,  deep- 
set  dark  eyes,  and  a  patient  look  that 
seemed  to  say,  like  the  bishop's,  "Oh, 
don't  mind,  it's  what  I'm  here  for." 
We  left  Malaga  the  next  day,  and  I 
never  heard  what  that  morning's  chill 
did  for  him. 

Another  matinal  snap-shot.  A  narrow, 
precipitous  alley.  I  do  not  know  how  we 
got  to  such  a  squalid,  closed-in  place. 
163 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

A  priest  came  swinging  by  with  rapid 
gait,  probably  on  some  sick-call ;  he  was 
absorbed  in  his  thoughts  and  did  not 
look  to  right  or  left.  A  group  of  nearly 
naked  little  children  were  sitting  on  the 
ground  in  the  middle  of  the  street,  intent 
on  some  game.  They  did  not  look  older 
than  five  or  six.  As  the  priest  strode 
past  they  looked  up,  started  to  their  feet, 
and  ran  lightly  after  him  up  the  steep 
ascent,  caught  his  hand,  one  after  the 
other,  and  kissed  it.  He  had  not  known 
they  were  there  till  he  felt  the  touch  of 
the  warm  little  lips.  He  gave  them  a 
word  of  blessing  and  hurried  on,  and 
they  turned  back  to  their  play  with  all 
seriousness,  not  even  looking  after  him. 
It  was  all  the  work  of  a  moment. 
164 


XIX 

IN    THE    SEVILLE    BULL    RING 

The  Seville  bull  ring  is  over  two  hun- 
dred years  old,  very  well  built,  and  white- 
washed, like  most  things  made  by  man's 
device  in  Spain.  The  bull-fight  that  I 
saw  in  Seville  was,  I  believe,  the  best 
thing  that  Spain  could  do  in  the  way  of 
a  bull-fight.  It  was  the  third  and  last 
day  of  the  fair ;  Seville  is  the  social  cen- 
tre of  Spain ;  the  three  days  of  the  fair 
are  the  culmination  of  the  social  year  in 
Seville,  and  the  last  fight  is  the  culmina- 
tion of  the  fair.  So,  logically,  it  was  the 
climax  of  a  climax,  and  as  such  it  was 
well  to  have  been  there,  if  one  wanted  to 
judge  favorably  of  bull-fights.  The  day 
was  perfect.  April  is  the  loveliest  month 
in  Seville,  like  early  June  at  home;  neither 
165 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

too  hot  nor  too  cold.  The  whole  town 
was  gay  with  the  fair,  and  all  the  gayest 
of  the  crowd  seemed  pushing  their  way 
towards  the  Plaza  de  Toros  with  us. 
There  were  open  carriages  with  black- 
eyed  women  in  the  traditional  bull-fight 
dress,  yellow  satin  trimmed  with  black 
chenille  fringe  and  a  mantilla  of  the 
same  chenille  on  the  head ;  there  were 
drags  and  dog-carts  driven  by  Spanish 
elegants,  and  filled  with  the  haute  710- 
blesse  of  Seville;  there  were  cabs  with 
eager  tourists  in  them  ;  there  were  trams 
stopping  before  the  entrance  and  dis- 
gorging crowds  of  flushed  and  hurried 
heads  of  families,  shepherding  troops  of 
little  children  in  their  holiday  clothes ; 
there  were  dark  peasants,  oily  mechanics, 
servant  maids,  hotel  porters,  pressing  in 
at  the  gate  where  all  have  to  enter, 
dividing,  some  above  and  some  below,  as 
indicated  by  the  green  or  red  or  blue 
ticket  that  each  held.  There  was  a  zeal 
about  it  all ;  the  air  and  the  sunshine 
166 


IN   THE   SEVILLE   BULL  RING 

even  were  zealous,  the  light  breeze  was 
full  of  anticipatory  thrills. 

We  struggled  up  to  our  places  in  one 
of  the  best  boxes;  we  had  felt  keenly 
afraid  we  were  to  be  cheated  out  of  it  by 
some  mysterious  Spanish  method.  I  do 
not  know  why,  but  travelers  always  are 
suspicious  of  the  good  faith  of  Spaniards, 
whereas  generally  I  have  found  they  are 
as  dependable  as  other  people  who  get 
their  living  out  of  the  traveling  public,  — 
perhaps  more  so.  Their  methods  are 
stupid,  and  they  are  hot-tempered  and 
stubborn,  but  they  seem  to  me  honest. 

When  we  had  got  into  our  box  and 
settled  ourselves  in  our  places,  we  looked 
around  with  delight.  What  a  coup  doeil! 
Imagine  the  vast  white  rim  of  the  build- 
ing against  a  deep  blue  sky,  and  all 
the  amphitheatre  down  to  the  barrier 
that  shuts  off  the  arena,  ablaze  with  the 
color  that  goes  to  the  clothing  and  the 
flesh  of  twelve  thousand  people;  gay 
fans,  parasols,  dresses,  hats,  the  white 
i       167 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

shirt  fronts  of  men,  the  dark  hair  and 
pink  cheeks  of  girls,  —  all  with  the  slight 
movement  and  vibration  of  a  living  mass. 
And  the  great  arena  itself,  what  a  glo- 
rious circle  of  color!  It  was  a  tawny, 
smooth  ring  of  yellow  sand  of  a  rich  and 
singular  tint,  brought  from  the  neighbor- 
ing mountains. 

The  wide,  empty  arena  so  resplen- 
dently  colored,  the  massed  brilliance  of 
the  throng  that  filled  the  amphitheatre 
from  top  to  bottom,  the  white  rim  above 
that  framed  it,  and  over  all  the  vivid  blue 
of  a  cloudless  sky,  —  struck  me  as  un- 
approachably fine.  No  wonder  that  the 
Spaniard  loves  his  bull-fight.  So  far  it 
is  to  the  credit  of  his  eye  and  his  taste 
that  he  does  ;  and  one  extends  the  credit 
a  little  further.  The  cntrada  is  beautiful. 
When  all  are  wrought  up  to  the  highest 
point  of  expectancy,  the  gates  in  the 
barrier  opposite  the  royal  box  open,  and 
the  gayly  trapped  procession  winds  in. 
Men  on  horseback  with  plumed  hats  ;  the 
i68 


IN   THE   SEVILLE   BULL   RING 

matadores  in  their  beautiful  dresses  ;  the 
picadores,  carrying  spears,  riding  their 
blindfolded  horses ;  the  gayly  decorated 
mules,  with  their  bells  jangling;  the 
troop  of  men  who  manage  them,  dressed 
in  snow-white  blouses,  —  all  this  cortege 
winds  through  the  dark  gateway,  and 
delights  the  eyes  of  the  throng  by  pass- 
ing two  or  three  times  around  the  ring. 
Then  a  horseman  rides  forward  out  of 
the  procession,  and  with  a  deep  obeisance 
pauses  before  the  royal  box  and  asks  for 
the  key  of  the  toril.  The  key  is  thrown 
down  to  him,  and  he  catches  it  in  his 
plumed  hat  which  he  holds  out.  This 
is  the  sign  for  all  to  withdraw  from  the 
ring  but  those  who  are  to  take  part  in 
the  baiting  of  the  bull.  The  mules  trot 
off,  shaking  their  bells,  followed  by  their 
running  drivers ;  the  men  on  horseback 
withdraw,  and  the  gates  close  behind 
them. 

There   is   a   sensational    silence.     All 
eyes  are  fixed  on  the  door  of  the  toril, 
169 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

which  differs  in  no  way  from  the  other 
doors  of  exit  and  entrance  but  by  having 
a  bull's  head  carved  over  it.  A  man 
goes  up  to  it  and  unlocks  it,  and  saves 
himself  by  jumping  over  the  barrier  as 
the  wild  creature  rushes  out  from  the 
dark  cell  in  which  he  has  been  incarcer- 
ated for  twenty-four  hours.  The  door 
is  quickly  pulled  shut  from  behind  the 
barrier.  Poor  beast,  he  looks  very  be- 
wildered for  a  moment.  He  tosses  up 
his  head  and  gazes  around,  amazed  at  the 
strange  scene  and  the  glare  of  light.  He 
catches  sight  of  a  picadore  across  the 
ring,  sitting  motionless  on  his  blinded 
horse,  always  headed  one  way.  All  the 
side  of  the  man  toward  the  bull  is  plated 
with  armor.  It  is  a  dastardly  sort  of 
business  all  through.  The  other  side  is 
never  presented  to  the  bull,  nor  does  the 
bull  have  the  least  chance  to  get  at  it. 
He  always  goes  straight  for  the  horse 
with  his  head  down,  plunges  his  horns 
into  the  bowels  of  the  creature  and  tosses 
170 


IN   THE   SEVILLE   BULL   RING 

him  over.  The  chulas  (the  apprentices) 
then  rush  forward,  and  by  waving  flags 
before  him  draw  off  his  attention  from 
the  prostrate  horse  and  the  picadore 
floundering  in  his  heavy  armor.  A  few 
moments,  and  this  doughty  knight  is 
helped  upon  his  legs,  and  if  his  horse 
is  still  alive  and  able  to  stand,  he  is  put 
upon  it  and  obliged  to  ride  around  the 
ring  to  be  ready  for  another  attack,  as 
soon  as  the  bull  has  dispatched  the 
second  horse,  upon  which  he  is  now  en- 
gaged. Something  like  fifteen  minutes, 
I  believe,  is  allotted  to  this  part  of  the 
taurine  drama.  Some  bulls  do  more 
rapid  disemboweling  than  others,  of 
course,  but  one  may  be  sure  the  thrifty 
manager  will  never  allow  more  than  the 
allotted  time  for  the  slaughter  of  the 
horses  he  has  bought  and  paid  for. 
There  were  fourteen  killed  that  day, 
and  that  was  rather  below  the  average. 

At  the  end  of  the  fifteen  minutes  a 
bugle  is  sounded ;  some  of  the  picadores 
171 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

ride  away  on  their  surviving  steeds ; 
those  whose  horses  are  killed  limp  away 
on  their  feet.  The  matadores  saunter  in, 
dainty  in  silk  and  velvet,  —  the  chulas 
with  their  banderillas  in  their  hands 
come  forward,  and  then  the  bull  takes 
his  chance  of  five  minutes  more  or  less 
of  life  at  the  hands  of  these  tormentors. 
One's  sympathies  are  all  with  the  horses 
in  the  first  act,  and  with  the  bull  in  the 
second  and  third  acts.  The  skill  of  the 
men  is  perfect,  and  their  courage  ad- 
mirable, but  they  are  twelve  to  one,  and 
brain  thrown  in.  Poor  bull !  he  has  but 
a  sorry  chance  for  the  few  minutes'  longer 
existence  that  he  fights  for.  He  is 
doomed,  but  then  fortunately  he  does  not 
know  it.  We  saw  six  killed  that  sunny 
April  afternoon,  —  six  splendid  bulls, 
black  and  glossy,  and  with  courage  and 
intelligence  that  deserved  a  better  fate. 

I  said  six  splendid  bulls.     But  no,  only 
five  were  "  splendid."    One  of  the  sLx  was 
a  failure.     Such  a  failure  as  comes  from 
172 


IN   THE   SEVILLE    BULL   RING 

not  wanting  to  fight.  He  was  as  grand 
to  look  at  as  the  others,  and  he  was  not 
afraid.  When  they  slammed  the  door  of 
the  toril  behind  him,  and  left  him  staring 
at  the  wide,  glaring  yellow  ring,  it  did 
not  seem  to  make  him  afraid  or  angry, 
only  amazed.  A  great  wonder  seemed 
swelling  in  his  breast ;  where  was  he  ? 
what  did  it  all  mean  ?  He  lifted  his 
head  and  walked  forward,  looking  up  at 
the  serried  ranks  of  Christians  gazing 
down  at  him.  I  think  he  had  a  poetic  na- 
ture, as  bulls  go.  He  seemed  to  wonder, 
speculate,  yearn  to  know  the  deeps  of 
fate.  When  he  got  to  the  centre  of  the 
huge  arena,  he  caught  sight  of  a  horse 
bestridden  by  a  valiant  picadore.  Some 
faint  stirring  of  his  animal  nature  dis- 
pelled for  the  moment  his  wondering 
trance.  Bulls  kill  horses ;  that  was  in 
his  blood.  He  ran  forward,  put  down 
his  head,  gored  the  horse,  tumbled  the 
rider.  He  was  not  afraid,  but  it  did 
not  amuse  him  ;  he  turned  away.  They 
173 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

dragged  another  horse  before  him  which 
he  did  not  rise  to  cordially,  but  finally 
they  nagged  him  into  tossing  horse  and 
rider  into  the  air.  The  crowd  did  not 
approve  him  ;  the  picadores  began  to  dig 
their  long  lances  into  him,  the  chulas  to 
wave  their  cloaks  before  his  bewildered 
eyes.  Even  this  only  made  him  furious 
for  the  moment.  When  they  let  him 
alone,  he  subsided  into  peace  again ;  he 
simply  had  no  use  for  the  horses ;  he 
was  not  a  coward,  but  he  was  pacific, 
large-natured.  This  did  not  please  the 
people.  The  chulas  and  the  picadores 
had  all  they  could  do  to  keep  him  to  his 
bloody  work. 

When  the  horses  had  been  withdrawn 
and  the  chulas  and  the  matadores  closed 
around  him,  it  was  pitiful ;  they  could 
not  call  up  any  anger  that  was  permanent. 
He  would  rush  at  them,  tear  their  flags, 
and  then  turn  away.  Three  times  dur- 
ing his  probation  he  shook  himself  clear 
of  their  persecution,  and  trotted  around 
174 


IN   THE   SEVILLE   BULL   RING 

the  vast  space,  and  with  a  wonderful  in- 
telHgence  stopped  before  the  toril  door 
and  looked  up  to  the  crowd  with  a  wist- 
ful appeal  to  be  let  out  of  this  brutal 
field  of  blood.  It  was  strange  that  he 
should  know  the  toril  door,  the  place  is 
so  huge,  and  the  barrier  so  round  and 
so  monotonous.  But  again  and  again  he 
came  back  and  stood  before  it,  the  blood 
streaming  from  his  wounds,  the  barbed 
banderillas  shaking  in  his  flesh  as  he  ran. 
His  look  as  he  lifted  his  head  to  the 
crowd  and  stood  imploring  at  the  toril 
door  will  always  trouble  me. 

There  was  nothing  that  made  his  death 
to  differ  from  the  death  of  the  others. 
There  is  a  horrible  monotony  about  their 
dying  always.  I  mean  in  their  death- 
throes.  There  are  critical  differences  in 
the  work  of  the  matadores,  of  course; 
some  give  the  fatal  thrust  more  daintily, 
at  which  the  crowd  applaud. 

But  always  there  is  a  sickening  faint- 
ness  that  seems  to  overtake  the  poor 
175 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

victims  a  few  seconds  after  the  fatal 
thrust  has  been  given ;  they  lie  down 
breathing  hard,  but  holding  their  heads 
high,  facing  their  foe.  Sometimes  one 
will  stagger  to  his  feet  again  and  make 
an  impotent  rush  at  the  brilliant,  smiling 
matadore  with  his  knife  hid  in  the  crim- 
son cloth  he  flaunts.  But  fate  has  been 
*' too  many  "  for  him.  It  is  no  use.  He 
lies  down  again,  a  bloody  froth  oozing 
from  his  nostrils.  There  comes  a  shudder 
and  a  collapse,  and  your  bull  is  dead. 

Well,  when  he  is  killed,  the  mules  trot 
merrily  in,  shaking  their  gay  bells  and 
the  red  tassels  with  which  they  are  be- 
decked, their  white-bloused  drivers  run- 
ning behind  them,  and  the  dead  bull  is 
dragged  off  the  field,  as  are  the  dead 
horses.  These  last  look  such  pitiful 
shapes  when  the  life  is  gone  out  of  them. 
They  are  generally  poor  beasts  to  begin 
with,  but  the  unknown  attribute  which 
we  describe  as  life  makes  them  such  dif- 
ferent objects.  In  a  moment,  a  rack  of 
176 


IN   THE  SEVILLE   BULL   RING 

bones,  a  heap  of  hoofs  and  ribs.  The 
bulls,  too,  look  so  poor  and  shapeless. 
What  is  life,  after  all?  How  much 
longer  before  the  philosophers,  who  will 
not  let  us  believe  anything  that  we  can- 
not understand,  tell  us  what  it  is  that 
goes  out,  the  absence  of  which  glazes 
in  an  instant  the  dead  monster's  eye,  and 
dulls  the  gloss  of  his  coat,  and  turns  the 
glorious  contour  of  his  limbs  into  de- 
formity ?  We  ought  to  know  such  a 
simple  thing  as  that,  and  to  understand 
it  thoroughly,  thoroughly,  before  we  be- 
lieve it. 

There  was  a  mare  in  the  ring  that  day, 
even  more  of  a  failure  than  the  bull  of 
which  I  have  spoken.  She  was  a  de- 
licately formed  creature ;  even  in  her 
wretched  plight  one  could  see  that  she 
was  well-bred.  She  had  the  remains  of 
beauty,  but  she  was  no  longer  beautiful, 
alas.  The  chief  thing  left  that  showed 
her  good  blood  was  an  exquisite  sen- 
sitiveness, a  quivering  apprehension  of 
177 


A   CORNER  OF   SPAIN 

danger,  intuitions  that  were  as  harrowing 
as  experiences.  It  is  possible  that  she 
had  had  experiences  too ;  she  may  have 
been  a  survival  of  yesterday's  fight  and 
have  been  wounded  and  patched  up  for 
to-day's ;  but  however  that  may  be,  she 
was  wild  with  terror.  Blindfolding  did  no 
good  ;  she  knew  everything  that  was  com- 
ing to  pass ;  she  was  absolutely  beyond 
control ;  they  could  not  drag  her  into 
place  for  the  bull's  attack.  I  have  never 
seen  anything  more  human  and  more 
harrowing  than  her  terror.  Two  men 
pulled  her  forward  by  ropes,  two  others 
from  behind  prodded  her  on  with  lances. 
She  vaulted,  started  aside,  shuddered, 
eluded  the  on.-coming  bull  many  times. 
The  allotted  moments  of  butchery  were 
waning,  the  people  were  angry ;  they 
cried  "Altro!  altro ! "  not  from  tender- 
ness of  heart,  alas,  but  from  a  thirst  for 
blood.  So  the  poor  frightened  creature 
was  withdrawn,  and  another  and  stupider 
was  brought  on,  who  was  quickly  dis- 
178 


IN   THE   SEVILLE   BULL   RING 

patched  by  the  bull  to  the  contentment 
of  the  multitude. 

I  gave  a  sigh  of  relief ;  the  nervous, 
high-strung  wreck  of  better  days  was 
safe,  and  would  be  turned  out  to  die 
upon  the  hills,  perhaps,  in  peace.  I  think 
I  even  said  a  prayer  to  that  effect.  But 
no.  When  the  next  bull  was  brought 
on,  the  poor,  faded  high-bred  beauty  was 
dragged  out  again.  This  time  better 
preparations  had  been  made,  more  ropes 
and  more  prods.  The  human  intellect 
with  brute  force  as  an  auxiliary  was  too 
much  for  mettle ;  and  amid  cheers  and 
hand-clapping  the  terrified  creature  was 
gored  and  tossed  high  in  the  air,  falling 
lifeless  on  the  tawny  sand,  dead  once  and 
for  all,  let  us  hope. 

Of  the  skill  of  the  matadores  one  can- 
not say  too  much  in  praise.  The  hero 
on  this  occasion  was  Espartero.  The 
two  others,  quite  as  skillful,  perhaps,  were 
Guerrita  and  Bombita.  All  three  were 
the  foremost  men  in  their  profession. 
179 


A   CORNER   OF    SPAIN 

Their  nerve  and  their  skill  were  as  per- 
fect as  their  dress,  their  bearing,  and  their 
grace. 

Guerrita  was  rather  my  favorite ;  he 
is  a  slender,  well-made,  perfectly  propor- 
tioned man  of  thirty-five  or  forty,  agile 
as  a  deer,  and  with  a  deliberate  grace 
of  movement  that  seems  to  redeem  the 
bloody  work  he  does  from  some  of  its 
horrors.  His  features  are  regular,  his 
expression  is  thoughtful,  his  face  clean- 
shaven like  a  priest's.  One  scarcely 
knows  whether  to  admire  him  most  when 
vaulting  over  a  bull  in  mid-career,  or 
planting  to  a  hair's  breadth  the  hidden 
knife  in  the  furious  creature's  spine,  or 
standing  with  his  g07'j'a  dc  torero  in  his 
hand,  calmly  bowing  to  the  vociferous 
and  excited  multitude  crowding  to  look 
down  at  him. 

One  of  the  dramatic  moments  at  a  bull- 
fight is  when  the  matadore  "pledges  "  the 
bull  to  the  chief  person  present.  On  the 
first  day  of  the  fair  the  personage  was 
1 80 


IN   THE    SEVILLE   BULL   RING 

the  Comtesse  de  Paris,  and  to  her  Es- 
partero  "pledged"  the  three  bulls  which 
came  to  his  share  to  slaughter.  He 
killed  them  all,  a  merveille,  with  one 
stab  each,  and  there  was  great  acclaim. 
It  was  said  the  Comtesse  would  surely 
send  him  *' something  very  handsome." 
I  hope  she  did,  and  that  his  family  have 
it  now  to  console  themselves  with,  for  in 
less  than  five  weeks  from  that  day  he  was 
instantly  killed  in  the  Madrid  Ring.  Peo- 
ple had  assured  me  the  whole  thing  was 
reduced  to  such  a  science  that  there  was 
literally  no  danger ;  that  the  courage  of 
the  matadores  was  a  laughable  fiction ; 
that  a  man  was  in  about  as  much  danger 
from  a  bull  as  a  telegraph  operator  is 
from  the  electric  current  he  works  with. 
This  is  a  very  comfortable  thought  as  you 
watch  a  bull-fight,  but  it  is  about  as  near 
to  truth  as  a  good  many  other  thoughts 
with  which  we  solace  ourselves.  That 
Espartero,  the  great  master  of  his  craft, 
died  weltering  in  his  blood  in  the  ring 
i8i 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

where  he  had  had  so  many  triumphs, 
proves  the  fallacy  of  such  a  theory.  Your 
bull  is  an  unknown  quantity.  You  take 
your  chance.  One  brute  differs  from  an- 
other brute  in  fury.  The  wild  creatures 
of  the  mountains  cannot  be  trained  to  suit 
your  game.  You  have  to  take  them  as 
they  come.  Some  time  ago  a  picadore 
was  gored  to  death  by  a  bull  who  went  for 
him  instead  of  the  horse,  the  body  of 
which  always  seems  his  objective  point. 
It  was  found  that  the  beast  had  some  de- 
fect of  vision,  which  caused  him  to  plant 
his  horns  a  foot  or  two  higher  than  he 
meant  to  do.  Therefore  the  matadore 
takes  his  chance,  and  it  no  doubt  adds 
subtly  to  the  pleasure  of  the  crowd  to 
know  it  is  so  grave  a  one. 
182 


XX 

AT   THE    SEVILLE   FAIR 

There  is  a  great  family  likeness  in 
fairs.  From  the  agricultural  "county- 
fair"  on  flat  and  hot  Long  Island,  reek- 
ing with  bullocks  and  sunburned  country 
people,  to  a  charity  bazaar  at  Sherry's, 
where  every  one  is  fainting  with  fatigue 
and  yawning  with  ennui,  they  are  alike 
disappointing  and  tame.  "  Who  pleasure 
follows,  pleasure  slays."  The  attempt  to 
be  amused  is  too  bald,  the  machinery 
used  too  cheap  ;  the  methods  are  amateur 
methods,  and  not  skilled  ones.  Cer- 
tainly they  have  been  at  it  generations 
enough  in  Seville  to  have  made  their 
fete  an  industry  of  the  place,  but  they 
have  not  succeeded  in  taking  it  out  of 
the  family  of  fairs  and  making  it  some- 
thing sui  generis. 

183 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

Seville  is  flat  and  hot,  —  they  call  it 
the  frying-pan  of  Europe ;  but  the  fair 
occurs  in  April,  when  the  fire  may  be 
said  scarcely  to  have  begun  to  crackle. 
The  houses  and  the  hotels  are  congested 
from  garret  to  basement  with  black-eyed 
Spaniards,  gentle  and  simple ;  the  trains 
are  overflowing,  the  narrow  streets  are 
jammed  with  pedestrians,  the  fine  equi- 
pages of  noble  Sevillians  and  the  heavy- 
laden  mules  of  the  in-coming  peasants 
jostle  each  other  through  the  crooked 
thoroughfares.  Certainly  all  this  is  bright 
and  amusing.  I  have  no  objection  to 
Seville  in  fair-time,  but  to  Seville's  fair 
as  a  fair  I  have  a  great  objection.  It  is 
nothing  that  prices  are  doubled  during 
the  time,  for  trams  and  cabs  and  hotels  ; 
if  all  this  made  people  happy,  one  would 
not  mind  for  once.  Sixty  francs  a  day 
for  two  people  in  one  small  room  at  the 
Hotel  de  Madrid  would  be  well  spent  in 
promoting  the  happiness  of  a  nation  or 
furthering  their  welfare  even  for  three 
184 


AT   THE   SEVILLE   FAIR 

days,  if  they  were  amused.  But  they  are 
not.  They  come  year  after  year,  and  they 
always  think  they  are  going  to  be  amused, 
I  am  sure.  The  love  of  such  pleasure 
seems  inborn,  and  the  belief  in  its  attain- 
ment dies  hard. 

The  fair-grounds  at  Seville  are  of  im- 
mense extent,  —  almost  miles,  I  think. 
There  are*  acres  and  acres  of  bullocks 
and  sheep  and  horses,  and  this  quarter, 
of  course,  smells  very  nasty,  and  is  not 
picturesque,  as  there  are  no  trees,  but 
either,  according  to  the  weather,  a  great 
deal  of  stifling  dust  or  trampled  mud. 
There  are  several  great  avenues  laid  out, 
and  actually  built  upon  every  year.  One 
is  a  sort  of  mercantile  quarter,  where  are 
booths  and  restaurants  and  shows.  An- 
other is  devoted  to  the  children ;  cheap 
toys  of  every  kind  are  for  sale,  and  hun- 
dreds of  whistles  and  trumpets  wail  the 
disappointments  of  as  many  little  bour- 
geois Spaniards.  There  is  nothing  else 
to  be  bought  that  I  heard  of,  nothing 
185 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

characteristic  except  things  to  eat,  and 
they  are  of  a  character  you  do  not  want 
to  eat,  and  naturally  cannot  keep. 

The  principal  show  of  the  place  is  the 
grand  avenue  where  the  high  fashion  of 
Seville  elects  to  spend  the  afternoons  and 
evenings  of  the  three  fair-days.  Here 
are  hundreds  of  what  look  like  pasteboard 
houses  painted  yellow,  without  doors  or 
glass  in  the  windows,  —  decidedly  pretty 
in  design  for  the  purpose.  They  vary  in 
size,  but  are  rather  monotonous  in  color 
and  form.  Some  of  them  have  balconies, 
where  pots  of  flowers  stand  and  where 
vines  have  been  hastily  nailed  up.  Many 
of  the  entrances  and  the  windows  are 
draped  with  pretty  chintzes,  and  the  in- 
teriors are  sometimes  gracefully  arranged 
with  furniture  brought  out  from  the  town, 
—  pianos,  lamps,  clocks,  vases  of  flowers, 
etc.  It  must  be  untold  trouble.  Con- 
tractors put  up  the  booths,  and  take 
them  down  at  the  end  of  the  fair  and 
store  them  till  the  next  year,  but  the  fur- 
i86 


AT  THE   SEVILLE   FAIR 

niture  seems  to  be  brought  by  the  family 
who  leases  or  owns  the  booth.  We  drove 
through  the  grounds  the  day  before  the 
fair  opened,  and  saw  men  and  maid-ser- 
vants- superintending  the  unloading  of 
carts,  and  an  occasional  head  of  a  family 
casting  anxious  looks  around,  and  evi- 
dently not  enjoying  that  part  of  it. 

All  the  booths  are  numbered ;  one 
walks  along  block  after  block  of  monot- 
onous edifices  where  nothing  seems  to 
be  going  on,  people  sitting  about  and 
looking  bored, — no  ela7i,  no  dash,  no 
anything.  Several  large  and  handsome 
structures,  all  in  the  same  style  of  archi- 
tecture and  colored  in  the  same  manner, 
are  put  up  or  rented  by  the  fashionable 
clubs  of  the  city.  These  are  quite  the 
centres  of  gayety  and  fashion,  they  say. 
I  did  not  see  the  gayety ;  the  fashion  was 
probably  incorporated  in  the  persons  of 
a  few  petits  mattres  who  talked  with 
languid  voices  to  some  smartly  dressed 
but  not  beaming  women  on  sofas. 
187 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

The  floor  of  each  booth  is  several  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  ground,  so  that 
the  occupants  are  on  a  stage  in  full  view 
of  the  masses  who  drive  and  walk  past 
all  day  long,  and  in  the  evening  crowd 
up  to  the  very  steps  to  look  on  at  the 
"enjoyment"  of  their  betters.  The 
booth  of  the  Infanta  was  in  no  sense 
more  private  than  those  of  less  impor- 
tant people.  The  publicity  of  the  whole 
thing  seemed  to  me  odious,  and  the 
stereotyped  machine-made  houses  took 
away  all  possibility  of  picturesqueness. 
I  had  fancied  tents  put  up  on  a  green 
field  gay  with  flags  and  hangings,  —  An- 
dalusian,  individual,  characteristic ;  dark- 
haired  beauties  in  mantillas  flitting  from 
one  to  the  other ;  Spanish  lovers  with 
lustrous  eyes,  touching  the  strings  of 
guitar,  mandolin,  or  zither;  the  sound 
of  castanets  half  heard ;  the  rhythm  of 
half-seen  dancers  from  within  ;  the  scent 
of  jasmine  and  rose  filling  the  air ;  the 
soft  glow  of  hanging  lamps  mixing  with 
1 88 


AT   THE   SEVILLE   FAIR 

the  pale  light  of  stars ;  the  moonbeams 
flickering  through  the  trees.  Seville,  the 
home  of  dance  and  song !  Aye  de  mi 
Sevillia !  One  more  illusion  gone.  I 
have  been  to  the  home  of  dance  and 
song,  and  what  have  I  seen } 

Our  visits  in  the  day  had  been  depress- 
ing, but  we  made  light  of  that,  thinking 
perhaps  the  evening  view  would  do  away 
with  this  impression.  We  all  alighted 
from  the  tram,  and  entered  what  I  must 
acknowledge  was  a  magnificent  avenue 
of  lanterns.  The  street  was  very  broad 
and  of  enormous  length,  and  it  was  en- 
tirely arched  by  strings  of  lamps ;  you 
walked  under  a  canopy  that  glowed, 
and  a  multitude  walked  with  you.  But 
in  such  silence!  You  heard  the  tramp 
of  feet  on  the  pavement  as  it  is  heard  at 
St.  Peter's  on  Good  Friday  after  vespers, 
when  there  is  no  music,  and  of  course 
no  speech.  A  most  decorous  crowd  it 
was.  I  admit  I  should  have  liked  a  little 
indecorum,  —  a  street  fight,  even,  to  vary 
189 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

the  monotony.  The  people  were  gen- 
erally of  the  lower  and  middle  classes,  — 
fathers  carrjang  babies,  women  trudging 
on  behind,  lads  marching  sulkily  along, 
looking  neither  to  the  right  hand  nor  to 
the  left.  I  do  not  know  how  the  grand 
monde  got  to  their  booths ;  but  evi- 
dently not  by  this  splendid  path  of  light, 
which  we  thought  the  best  thing  at  the 
fair. 

The  peasants  did  not  wear  costumes ; 
the  women  had  print  skirts,  and  shawls, 
and  handkerchiefs  over  their  heads  ;  the 
men,  the  worst-made  common  coats  and 
trousers.  Too  often  the  girls  wore  cheap 
and  gaudy  hats  and  jackets  that  might 
have  been  bought  in  Third  Avenue  or  the 
Bowery :  in  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  place,  not  a  white  cap,  not  a  bodice, 
not  a  sabot.  Two  or  three  black  Canton 
crape  shawls,  embroidered  richly  in  old 
rose  or  yellow,  worn  with  an  air  of  inher- 
itance by  bare-headed  peasant  women, 
were  the  only  suggestions  of  a  costume 
190 


AT  THE   SEVILLE   FAIR 

that  I  saw.  Of  course,  the  women  of 
the  better  class  wore  mantillas,  but  you 
always  count  on  the  peasants  for  color 
and  picturesqueness  in  a  crowd. 

Well,  this  sad-faced  multitude  were 
only  on  their  way  to  the  fair.  When 
they  were  actually  there,  perhaps  they 
would  wake  up  and  be  jocund.  Not  in 
the  least.  They  never  woke  up  or  did 
anything  but  pace  from  end  to  end  of 
the  long  avenues,  looking  as  if  their  legs 
ached,  and  as  if  they  wished  that  it  were 
time  to  go  home.  I  went  drearily  from 
one  tent  to  another,  and  at  last  I  resolved 
to  stop  and  centre  my  powers  of  analysis 
upon  one  booth  which  seemed  to  me 
about  an  average  example  of  its  class. 
There  was  dancing  going  on,  and  a  good 
many  people  were  collected  outside,  look- 
ing in.  So  while  the  rest  of  the  party 
moved  along  I  sat  down  in  a  chair,  for 
which  a  man  promptly  invited  me  to  pay 
twenty  centimes.  Having  satisfied  his 
claims,  I  tried  to  indemnify  myself  by 
191 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

studying  the  Seville  fair  in  an  individual 
development. 

The  scene  in  the  booth  before  me  was 
really  pathetic.  What  an  heroic  attempt 
to  be  gay,  to  realize  the  traditions  of  the 
fair !  Around  the  sides  of  the  room,  on 
sofas  and  chairs,  sat  several  elderly  wo- 
men, whose  well-worn,  plain  black  silk 
gowns,  thin  hair,  and  awkward  pose 
showed  them  to  be  no  longer  of  a  world 
where  song  and  dance  prevailed.  It 
seemed  a  cruelty  to  bring  them  out  of 
the  obscure  domesticity  into  which  they 
fitted,  and  place  them  under  this  garish 
light.  Some  ungainly  boys,  compelled 
by  the  solemnity  of  the  function,  were 
wriggling  uncomfortably  on  their  chairs, 
and  casting  furtive  glances  out  at  the 
crowd.  Two  pretty  young  girls  in  deep 
mourning  sat  just  by  the  entrance;  they 
did  not  disguise  their  ennui,  for  not  a 
cavalier  of  any  kind  had  come  near  them. 
Before  this  inspiriting  domestic  group  a 
dance  was  going  on.  At  the  piano  was  a 
192 


AT   THE   SEVILLE   FAIR 

woman  whose  round  and  aged  back  only 
was  presented  to  us,  playing  with  vigor 
and  spirit,  and  in  excellent  time,  one  of 
the  Spanish  dances.  What  vim,  what 
determination,  she  put  into  it !  They 
should  dance,  their  booth  should  be  gay. 
Another,  of  heroic  mould  like  herself, 
was  dancing,  —  a  woman  of  about  thirty- 
five  ;  in  her  youth  no  doubt  "  a  fine 
figger  of  a  woman,"  but  now,  alas,  rather 
stout,  —  and  with  her  a  somewhat  pretty 
little  girl  of  twelve  in  white  muslin.  The 
elder  dancer  wore  a  well-fitting  gown  of 
black  satin  and  a  white  lace  mantilla 
admirably  put  on,  fastened  with  a  red 
rose  in  her  hair  and  three  or  four  on  her 
breast.  She  danced  remarkably  well, 
clapping  her  castanets  with  sharp  pre- 
cision, moving  with  all  the  grace  possible 
to  such  pronounced  embonpointy  and 
catching  the  very  spirit  of  the  music. 
With  eye  and  murmured  admonition  she 
kept  her  rather  lax  little  partner  up  to 
her  work.  But  it  was  such  hard  work,  — 
193 


A   CORNER   OF   SPAIN 

such  swimming  against  the  current  of 
fate,  of  feeling,  of  years !  It  was  mis- 
placed valor,  a  magnificent  charge  against 
the  inevitable.  It  was  a  storming  of  the 
fortress  of  Pleasure,  which  never  has 
been  and  never  can  be  carried.  Dear 
lady,  if  the  gates  open  to  you  of  them- 
selves, go  in  and  thank  the  gods. 

*'  I  only  know  't  is  fair  and  sweet, 
'T  is  wandering  on  enchanted  ground 
With  dizzy  brow  and  tottering  feet,"  — 

but  all  must  be  in  the  nature  of  a  gift 
and  not  a  conquest.  I  wanted  to  put 
my  arms  around  that  middle-aged  dancer 
of  the  Malaguenas,  to  take  the  castanets 
out  of  her  hand,  and  tell  her  to  go  and 
do  something  that  would  give  her  some 
enjoyment,  and  I  yearned  to  escort  back 
to  shelter  those  poor  old  black  silk  gowns 
which  looked  so  *'  out  of  it "  under  the 
electric  light.  I  wanted,  too,  to  turn 
the  little  boys  adrift,  and  give  them 
money  to  buy  whistles  and  trumpets  to 
make  all  the  noise  they  lusted  in  the 
194 


AT   THE   SEVILLE   FAIR 

humbler  quarters  of  the  fair.  As  to  the 
two  pretty  girls  in  black,  who  sat  like 
Sally  Waters,  "a-wishin'  and  a-waitin' 
for  a  young  man,"  I  longed  to  whisper 
to  them  to  go  home  and  sit  in  the  chim- 
ney corner,  —  or  w^hatever  answers  to  the 
chimney-corner  in  Andalusian  homes,  — 
and  to  assure  them  that  it  was  down  in 
the  book  of  Fate  he  would  surely  come 
to  them  there. 

I  have  never  been  more  depressed  by 
the  mistaken  efforts  of  my  kind  to  be 
happy  than  I  was  that  damp,  warm  night 
at  Seville,  sitting  under  the  trees,  and 
watching  first  the  dancing  in  the  booths, 
and  then  the  crowd  dragging  past  me 
as  if  it  were  Weary-Foot  Common  they 
were  crossing,  and  not  the  land  of  Beulah. 
195 


(Cfe  6iterstbe  j^ufi^ 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS,  U.  S.  A. 

ELECTROTYl'KU    AND    PRINTED    BY 

H.  O.  HOUGHTON  AND  CO. 


RARE  BOOK 
COLLECTION 


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